


truth and trust

by skitzofreak



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, F/M, Force worship, Injury, Mentions of Slavery, Rancor, Sarcasm, Witches of Dathomir AU, because lets be real, griffins in space, lyra lives, many liberties taken with canon witches, matriarchal societies written by men tend to have...issues, mission fic (sort of), more or less, pre-movie alternate meeting, rated for some violence, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-06-10 14:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 56,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15293481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: “Depends,” Jyn flashes him a sly smile, and tosses a small energy spanner into his lap. “On how good your imagination is.” Her eyes are bright with humor, and again he wonders at how green they are in the red sunlight, and the blue and green markings on her arms are almost as colorful. He wants, ridiculously, to trace his fingers down the lines from her shoulder to her elbow, and see if the fine hairs he can see on her skin raise in response, if her skin pebbles and shivers under his touch. She grins at him like a tooka cat scenting a mouse and asks almost sweetly, “Do you have much of an imagination, Offworlder?”--Captain Cassian Andor is chasing rumors of an Imperial weapon. It's not going well, and when an Imperial bounty hunter chases him to an isolated planet rumored to be home to savage witches, it gets significantly worse.Or, possibly, better than he could have imagined.





	1. hunted and hidden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shuofthewind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/gifts).



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>  _“You were the one who taught me," he said. "I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling.”_  
>  ― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

When Cassian is five years old, his uncle calls all his siblings and cousins in to the main house for a special Festival of Light treat, and tells stories about the fantastic people of the galaxy that he met on his merchant travels (before the big war with the droids and the Jedi took his leg and his eye and made his smile so nervous). Tío Arej talks of gentle wookiees who decorate their fur with glowing flowers and monstrous space beasts like the colorful purggil and the ever-hungry qworlth skaal. He speaks of trading with Jawas in the desert and dancing with Twi’lek shamans on floating tropical islands (Cassian, in his second-hand parka and giant scarf, is not too clear on the concept of either deserts or tropical islands, but he likes the sound of them anyway).

And then Tío Arej drops his voice, glances up at the kitchen where Mamá and the aunties all gather around their old cleaning droid, discussing the best way to fix it. The children hush as he leans in, sensing that he is going to tell them a special story that Mamá would not like them to hear. “And once,” Tío Arej tells them, a strange look on his face that makes Cassian feel uneasy, “I met a real, living _witch_.” The children gasp, and Tío Arej’s grin widens. “She was a beauty, and a warrior, and she had magic of a kind we no longer see in the universe, little ones.”

Cassian’s siblings and cousins clamor with breathless questions. “Did she control you as a mind-slave?”

“Did she turn you into a taun-taun?”

“Did she _eat_ you?”

Cassian’s voice is quiet, but he knows how to wait for the small gaps, the little silences in all the clamor of the bigger kids. So when he asks, “Did she take something from you?” Tío Arej turns to look at him over the heads of all the others.

“Ah, little nephew. She took something, yes, something I gave her. Something she wanted. But in turn, she taught me three true things. Let me tell you what I learned, when I came to the planet of the witches.”

He tells them the three things, and the next day, Cassian’s Mamá scolds Tío Arej for giving her youngest son nightmares.

 

* * *

 

Cassian drops the U-Wing out of hyperspace, sets the throttle at maximum range glide speed to preserve fuel, and turns to K2SO.

“Negative contacts,” Kay says, optics focused on the screens in front of him.

But Cassian knows better than to trust that, now. The first time they dropped out of hyperspeed, they had flown for almost twenty minutes before Kay discovered their newfound problem. The second time, only fifteen minutes. As Cassian hops throughout the system with increasing desperation, the countdown gets shorter and shorter. Last time, it took less than three minutes before their shadow dropped into real space almost directly on top of them.

Thirty silent seconds tick by. Forty. Cassian checks the fuel gauges (half full, that’s not too bad – but he can’t keep this up. He needs to get to a safe location, but he can’t afford to lead this relentless stranger anywhere near a rebel outpost, let alone Yavin IV). Fifty seconds. (How in all the many hells was this Imperial shuttle following him through hyperspace? That isn’t possible). Sixty seconds.

“Negative contacts,” Kay says again. Cassian calculates two different possible jumps – in twenty minutes, if he’s still clear, he’ll jump to Horox III outpost. If he’s not (and it’s insane that he’s not, has the Empire figured out hyperspace tracking? He doesn’t even want to think about it), well, if he’s not clear, then he’ll jump to a nearby asteroid field, maybe try to shake them in the confusing magnetic fields.

Two minutes. “Negative contacts,” Kay says a third time, and Cassian runs a hand through his hair.

Good, alright, he can handle this. Mandalore had been a massive fuck up and he has some compelling evidence that the enemy now has a means to follow at least small craft through hyperspace jumps, but if he’s shaken his tail then he can –

“Contact,” Kay’s mechanical voice is suddenly sharp. “Vector three-four-seven-tack-two, five klicks and closing.”

“Same contact?” Cassian snaps, his hands already flying over the console, but he hardly needs to ask. The cold feeling in the pit of his stomach tells him that it is.

“Affirmative,” Kay replies, and the cold in Cassian’s middle spreads a little more. “Contact is a personal craft registered as an Imperial contractor.”

Bounty hunter, Cassian thinks with a sneer, but he’s too busy snapping out a quick encoded message to any rebel frequency that might pick it up. It’s simple, just a warning, _Imperial patrols in the area_ , but it’s all he has time for. The bounty hunter who has been chasing him since he fled Mandalore is within sight now, and Kay’s right, they are definitely closing fast.

“This tactic of retreat is not working.”

“Got a better one?” Cassian hits the button to eject the U-Wing’s small bilge tank. There isn’t much in it, but maybe some space junk will distract or confuse the enemy’s sensors. It’s a desperate move with only a slim chance of working, but he’s an increasingly desperate man.

“Analysis suggests the enemy has a tracker on board,” Kay selects his second hyperspace formula and enters it into the console. “Potentially on the outside of the craft. We must land and disable it.”

“They’ll just land on top of us,” Cassian shoots back a bit peevishly, and throws the throttle into hyperspace. It’s a short jump, only about half an hour to the asteroid field, and he’s starting to worry that even that won’t work.

“There is a planet shortly beyond the current destination. Records suggest it has a strong distortionary effect on most communications equipment.”

Cassian watches the stars stretch out into blurred blue lines with his jaw set, then leans back and looks at the planet Kay has brought up on the console.

“Dathomir,” he reads, then blinks. “Wait, _Dathomir?_ As in, the Witches of Dathomir? _”_

“I hope you are not concerned about superstitious accounts from the Clone Wars,” Kay begins a little peevishly. “There is no current hard evidence of magic existing, whatever tales the older veterans like to espouse in the Yavin Cantina.”

Cassian nods, but he can’t help adding, “The Empire destroyed a lot of records, or cut off the public from the rest.”

Kay whirrs with irritation. “Do you believe in witches, Cassian?”

“I’m not worried about myths, Kay. I’m worried about whether or not we’ll be rushing into an unknown wilderness with an enemy on our tail and no sure way to shake them.”

“Records suggest Dathomir has a strong distortionary - ”

“I heard you,” Cassian rubs a hand over his face. “Odds we can safely land in the distortion and find the tracking device?”

“Seventy-two percent,” Kay replies immediately. “Higher than the odds that the enemy will simply give up in this pursuit. Significantly higher than the odds that the enemy will lose us after the next jump. Astronomically higher than the odds that sentient beings capable of magically controlling their victim’s minds lurk undetected on Dathomir. ”

“Yes, thank you,” Cassian shoots him a glare. “Fine. Prep a hyperspace jump for Dathomir the second we drop out of this one. Maybe we can throw them off with a quick jump anyway.”

Kay hunkers his cranium down, usually a sign that he is attempting to lower himself to a more ‘comforting’ human level. “Would you like to know the odds of that?”

Cassian barks a short, tired laugh. “No.”

 

* * *

 

When Cassian is twelve, Draven brings him before a tall Togruta woman with piercing eyes who asks him a series of pointed, difficult questions interspersed with the occasional deeply personal prod at his childhood ( _I was_ _born in the Outer Rim, ma’am, no, I’ve never been back_ ), his work for the Alliance ( _whatever I’m asked, whatever is needed, it’s a matter of record, ma’am, if you have clearance, then you already know_ ), and once, his family ( _dead_ ).

After almost three hours of interrogation, the Togruta sighs, nods to Draven, and Cassian recieves a new code name. ( _Fulcrum is the highest intelligence network we have, Andor, most of the Fleet isn’t even authorized to know that word in any connection to our department, understand?_ ) He is given dozens of files to study, a whole new level of analysis and data mining, his education mostly gained in reports gathered by agents, contacts, and assets far and wide. His task is to understand the complex networks that feed, shelter, and sometimes threaten the Alliance. Most of the files are huge, whole planets-worth of data about culture and history.

One file is very small.

 _Dathomir : _ _Mostly Human. Last political influence: Clone Wars Era, Lothal Year 3257._

Underneath the typed line, someone has used a stylus to add in a neat hand: _Ware the Witches._

 

* * *

 

Dathomir is a pretty enough planet, from orbit. Pinkish continents with a swath of yellow and orange desert in the south, purple oceans, Human-friendly atmosphere, and only slightly lower-than Core standard gravity. Cassian doesn’t have time to take in much more than that, because he sends the U-Wing screaming down into the atmosphere at a dangerous angle and speed the moment they drop out of hyperspace. He needs to get on the ground and shut down the ship as soon as possible. He needs to find this tracking device (there must be some reasonable explanation for how the bounty hunter is so close behind him through even random hyperspace jumps. He does not believe in magic).

Cassian aims the nose as low as he dares and forces the engines to whine through the transition from space to atmosphere without running through the usual safety checks and procedures. No time.

“Multiple life forms detected on the surface,” Kay says calmly, as if they aren’t screaming down out of the sky towards an unforgiving earth, as if the hull isn’t glowing cherry red with Cassian’s unorthodox entry angle. “Likelihood of sentients is high. Likelihood of magical sentients is low. I recommend landing along the shore line, where there are less sentients altogether.”

“Shore,” Cassian grunts in response, straining a bit against the G-forces that the U-Wing grav-generator doesn’t have time to compensate for as he swoops them out of the dive at the last second. Inside the actual atmosphere, the colors are a bit more varied, with green trees intermixed in the red forest canopy, and the seas more of an indigo blue than purple. Cassian does not spend much time admiring the scenery, however. He’s going so fast that he has to wrench the controls hard to get the ship to turn, skimming the tops of several trees that soon give way to pale rocky cliffs, and then, mercifully, a wide white beach.

The U-Wing shoots out over the shoreline towards the placid sea, and then kicks up a spray of ocean water as he banks again back towards the shore. Cassian spots what looks like some kind of sheltered cove, surrounded by tall white cliffs streaked through with orange and red, like rust stains dripping down the otherwise pristine stone (or like blood, trickling down in thin rivulets towards the red-stained ground). The white rocks in the cliffs reflect the bright sun back fiercely. Good, that might help scramble any transmission signals from a tracker. Cassian heaves the throttle back, slams on the grav-lock repulsors, and spins the U-Wing in a tight, smooth circle. The small craft whirls through the air, then settles with only a minor jarring thump on the beach, ringed on three sides by cliffs and the ocean on the fourth. The hull is still glowing red in a few places, steam rising off the underside where the water sprayed up against the hot metal.

Cassian shuts down the U-Wing as fast as he can, and claps Kay’s metal shoulder. “Auxiliary power to the emergency console only, scan for any incoming craft. I’m going to visually inspect the hull.”

“Scans indicated multiple lifeforms,” Kay reminds him. “Several of which may be carnivorous. Your odds of being eaten are equilibrate.”

“I’ll be careful,” Cassian promises, and grabs the toolkit secured to the cargo bay bulkhead. If there is some kind of tracker on his hull, he will need a hammer to smash it off.

 

* * *

 

The beach is mostly white pebbles, though a thin line of smooth red pebbles traces along the break between shore and water, making  the waterline itself unusually distinct. It looks, he thinks to himself, a bit like a warning. Don’t go in the water. Fortunately, he has no intentions of doing that. The beach is unsettlingly empty of any life that Cassian can detect. No birds, no scuttling creatures, and certainly no witches. He drops from the cargo hold to the rocky ground with a blaster in one hand and a hammer in the other, both poised to defend himself (just in case). Nothing comes boiling out of the water or bursting up through the ground, nobody starts chanting curses at him, and a quick glance upward shows only an empty reddish sky. Still, his heart pounds as he turns his back on the water and starts examining his U-Wing’s hull. He slaps the hatch closed so he can check for trackers, but it’s clean.

The back of his neck prickles, the unsettling sensation of being observed even when all his other senses detect nothing. He sweeps another look across the beach, the nearby sea, up the cliffsides around him. Nothing anywhere near him except rolling purple waves, white stones, and the tense thump of his own heartbeat. Nobody watching him, not even wild animals; his violent arrival probably drove them all off for awhile. He’s just on edge, wound up and letting superstition and the stress of his failed mission eat at his good sense. It has been…not a good day.

He’d been so _close._ Perhaps Mandalore had not held all the answers he needed, but for the first time in months he’d felt like he was really getting somewhere. His source had proof – actual holographic proof! – that Saw Gerrera passed through Mandalore almost fifteen years ago with two cloaked figures that were certainly not soldiers. The footage was not the best, but it was obvious that Saw took elaborate care to keep their faces hidden, and they had gathered enough supplies to travel a long way. It might have been the missing Ersos – or two of them, anyway. The shorter figure was clearly a child, the daughter, but the taller could have been either the wife or Galen Erso himself. Cassian had been just minutes from getting his hands on the old archived service records from the spaceport that had captured their likeness on camera. He could have parsed out their ship’s registry, and more importantly, where they went. He would have been one step closer to finding the scientist and discovering just what Erso’s connection is to the mysterious Imperial weapons’ project that has Analysis in such an uproar and Draven pacing nervously in his office. He could have followed a trail that for once was built on more than guess work and faint hope.

But then his contact, who turned out to be a selfish little _cabrón,_ got greedy, and Cassian ended up fleeing just ahead of the Imperial squad the contact had tipped off for the reward on rebel spies. And now, here he is, in the middle of nowhere with a bounty hunter lurking somewhere nearby, jumping at shadows, tripping on sharp rocks, and nothing to show for it. Three months of tracking the Alliance’s best lead on Erso, wasted.

Cassian ducks under the right S-foil and flails as his boot slips on some wet rocks, landing awkwardly on one knee and just barely stopping himself from faceplanting on the beach. His hammer clatters away several steps, and he knocks his blaster against the hull with an unpleasant _clang_ as he struggles to right himself. A sharp pain lances up through his hand, and he curses under his breath as a few drops of blood well up in the scrape on his palm, dripping down to leave rusty stains of his own on the white rock. This is really not a good day for him. _So close_ , he thinks again, bitterly.

(And yet, nothing but a grainy image of people in cloaks and the corpse of his former contact on his hands, just another death in his wake as he hunts and hides and lies his way across a galaxy that won’t admit it’s at war. Cassian clenches his fist tight and feels the blood weep between his fingers, and is grateful for even the minor sting in his palm.)

 “I have detected no pursuit from above,” Kay’s voice crackles in his comm suddenly, dragging Cassian back from his dark thoughts. “However, the cliffs are interfering with surface scans. I would have to restart the engines to draw enough power for an acceptable reading.”

“Negative, too dangerous. We won’t be here long, Kay,” he trudges out from under the U-Wing to pick up the dropped hammer with his now-bloody hand. “Just watch the sky.”

“Have you detected any evidence of mind control, animal transmutation, or telekinesis?”

“No,” Cassian sighs. “No witches.”

“Have you detected the tracking device?”

“No. And I don’t think - ”

Someone is standing behind him.

He hasn’t heard anything, hasn’t seen so much as a shadow flicker, but Cassian suddenly knows with cold certainty that someone is standing behind him and staring at him. Cassian glances to the side without turning his head. He’s right next to the landing strut, he can move behind it and lean around to shoot. The hammer feels slick in his bloody grip, he’ll have to drop it when he moves. The sun is high and left, when he takes cover, it should be behind him. Good, that might interfere with the opponent’s view without obscuring his. Cassian takes another step, forcing his face to stay oriented towards the hull so the watcher won’t be tipped off.

Something in the distant forest roars.

Cassian dives for the landing strut, slamming to his abused knees, letting the hammer fall to the ground again, and swinging his arms up to aim his blaster back towards the cliffs.

Nothing.

He scowls, because he’d been so _sure._ (There’s no such thing as magic, let alone mind control, Andor, get a grip and get focused.)

A noise, footsteps racing lightly towards him, but something’s off about the sound, it’s almost like it’s –

Coming from above?

_The roof!_

Cassian shoves himself to his feet and starts to raise his blaster up but

_WHAM!_

All the air goes rushing out of his lungs, the world careens drunkenly under his feet, and then smashes into his back. Something heavy slams down on his chest, and his vision greys out as all the air vanishes from his lungs. His blaster rips from his hand and he scrabbles at the pebbles beneath him, hunting for a weapon, a good sized rock, anything! But something hard and sharp pricks his throat now, and he goes still because even stunned and disoriented he knows a knife when he feels one against his pulse.

Cassian presses his body flat against the rocky ground, his hands latching on to the blurry form on his chest, trying his best to suck in air without jostling his throat against the razor-edged blade.

His vision clears a moment later, and he finds himself pinned under a humanoid being, some sort of embroidered, hooded robe covering a light figure under his hands, and most importantly, she has a long, wicked knife poised against his neck. The knife is a silvery metal, the handle looks like bone, and she holds it with the confidence of someone who has used it often, from an early age. Her other hand is pressed against his chest, over his galloping heart.

 “Not,” he gasps, trying to speak around the weight of her bony knees digging into his gut, “not…enemy.”

Her head tilts to the side, and then she leans forward without letting the knife-tip waver, possibly to get better leverage so she can slice through his neck and severe his head entirely. Cassian fists his bloody hands in her robe, desperate to throw her off, and his grip is hard enough to distort the collar of the cloak, yanking the material away from her throat. A crystal of some kind swings out from under the fabric, hanging on a long, braided cord. It dangles just over Cassian’s face, and the woman lifts her hand from his chest to snatch at it. Instinctively, Cassian does too, his hand closing over hers. She snarls, then without warning, the crystal ignites with a hundred fractured rainbows that pour out from between their clenched fingers.

They both freeze, but Cassian recovers first and uses the distraction and his tenuous grip on her robe to wrench his hips and heave her away from him. It’s a clumsy throw; his hand-to-hand instructor would be appalled. He barely succeeds in dumping her in the pebbles next to him and gracelessly shoving himself a few feet away. The woman rolls to her feet as smoothly as if this were some rehearsed maneuver, the bone-handled knife raised between them even as her other hand keeps a tight hold of the crystal.

Cassian makes it back to his own feet and puts several steps worth of distance between them. Her hood has fallen back, revealing a young Human woman with long dark hair pinned back in a messy braided bun, and green eyes rimmed in smudged kohl. There’s a small scar bisecting her right eyebrow, and…a blaster on her hip. The blaster throws him, because if she could have just shot him, why jump him like this? But more surprising even than that is the way she’s standing now, staring at him with wide eyes and her lips parted in shock. Cassian rubs his aching gut and wonders a bit sourly what that look is supposed to mean. It wasn’t as if _he_ was the one to drop on top of _her_ head out of nowhere without warning.

Her knuckles are white around the crystal, which seems to have gone dark and dull again, but her eyes burn into him. He understands, suddenly, why he felt her watching him, earlier. If she was looking at him with that kind of intensity, how could he not?

“Offworlder?” she asks, a lilting voice that nearly knocks him over again because it’s not some Outer Rim slurred form of Basic but a crisp, precise accent he would have expected to hear on a Core world. Not just any Core world, either - what is a woman with a Force-forsaken _Coruscanti_ accent doing out here in the far Outer Rim? She stands up straight, tucking her crystal back into her robe and glaring at him now. Her knife, he notices, stays bared in his direction. “An offworlder,” she repeats, this time her voice more incredulous than confused. She grits her teeth and glowers at him. “I didn’t think you were real,” she jabs the knife at his face, accusatory. Cassian backs up another step.

_Wait. What?_

“Lifeform detected in your vicinity,” Kay crackles suddenly in his ear. “Exercise caution.”

 

* * *

 

“For the record, situations like this,” Kay says in a flat tone that tells Cassian he is very, very annoyed, “would be resolved much quicker if I had a blaster.”

 _Well,_ Cassian thinks as he rifles through the crate of supplies he picked up on Mandalore before the operation went all to the hells, _he’s not wrong._ On the other hand, Kay’s idea of ‘resolved’ is somewhat different from Cassian’s, occasionally. “What are the odds,” he says as he finds the new medkit and fishes it out, “that she has friends nearby?”

He sets the medkit on the bench in the middle of the U-Wing cargo hold and looks pointedly at the woman, who leans against the open doorway of his ship and watches them both with wary eyes. Her knife is still in her hand, and the other hovers now on the hilt of the blaster, but she’s left her hood down and she doesn’t seem much interested in coming into the ship itself. Cassian’s not entirely sure if she’s trying to pen them in, or considering how she will kill them and steal the ship, or just…watching. She doesn’t respond to his blatant attempt to probe for answers about her possible ‘friends,’ either. She doesn’t say anything, hasn’t since that first odd revelation on the beach. In fact, if he hadn’t already heard her speak, he might think her mute.

“Significant,” Kay responds instead.

Cassian finally manages to flip the medkit latch open with his unbloodied hand. “And the odds that her friends would react poorly if you shot her?”

“Too many unknown parameters for precise calculation.”

Cassian lifts his head from the medkit and gives him a look.

“But also significant,” Kay concedes sulkily.

The medkit has the standard collection of bacta gel and patches, some stim shots and a bone stabilizer, a few bright yellow mesh bandages, and a small box that he doesn’t recognize, stamped with the crest of the Governor of Mandalore. An older crest, too, from the original Governor Saxon, not his brother who now rules the planet under an Imperial blessing to basically do whatever he wants to the people of that once-free world.

Cassian grimaces at himself; now is not the time for this. He has to set the bitterness of his failed mission (the bitterness of a failing struggle against an implacable enemy) aside. He needs to focus. He pulls the small box out and sets it aside on the table, reaching for the mesh bandages instead.

“Medical protocol recommends bacta application to injuries.”

 “I’m not wasting bacta on a scrape.”

“The bandage alone will not prevent infection from foreign matter. The medical database has no data on this planet. Your flesh could become necrotic.”

Cassian shrugs, “Everything rots,” he hears himself say, and then wonders why he did.

The woman stills. She wasn’t moving much before, but somehow she shifts from “not currently moving” to “rigid as a statue,” and Cassian’s body tenses in response.

“That,” she says slowly, “is a true thing.”

The silence hangs between them in the still air, punctuated only by the crashing of distant waves.

“On Tattooine there is a giant underground creature that eats only what stumbles into it’s perpetually open maw and survives by moving as little as possible,” Kay breaks the silence, “Technically, it’s victims do not rot. They are dissolved in acid.”

The woman’s nose wrinkles, one eyebrow arching up. Cassian sighs. “Thank you, Kay.”

“Kay,” the woman repeats, and Cassian’s head jerks up, startled. She still hasn’t moved, but her focus is entirely on the droid now, her chin lowered as if she’s prepping to charge forward into battle.

“K-2SO,” Kay says after a beat, his optics telescoping. “That is my designation.”

The woman looks at Kay steadily, and Cassian tenses, his half-wrapped hand drifting towards his blaster. Then she turns to him and raises an eyebrow. “Yours?”

For a moment, he considers lying. Kay’s induction into the Alliance had not been particularly smooth, because even among some of the most adamant freedom fighters in the galaxy, droids are generally not considered, well, people. When Cassian “reprogrammed” Kay as a boy, General Cracken had nearly ordered the droid scrapped. Only Mothma’s interferences, and Draven’s grudging support, had allowed him to keep his friend. (He suspects that his most recent psyche eval might also have held some weight, because Cassian is valuable, and no one likes it when valuable things break).

In general, if people found out that Cassian had not, in fact, changed a damn thing in Kay’s internal processes save for a more expansive vocabulary, someone would shoot the droid on the spot.  There are precious few people in the Alliance who know that Kay is running without an internal restraining bolt, and none at all who know the extent of what Cassian has really done.

The woman raises her free hand and wraps it around her crystal again as she watches him, waiting for his answer. There’s a focused look in her eye that makes the hair on the back of his neck prickle again, just like out on the beach when she was watching him. He has the oddest sensation that she’s looking through him, past every mask he’s ever constructed straight to the tired, frustrated, hollow man inside.

It’s…not as unpleasant a sensation as he expects.

Cassian licks his lips (tastes salt from the ocean spray, salt from his sweat), and to his astonishment, hears himself say, “Kay is a free being.”

At his side, Kay turns from examining the woman to examining _him_ , a faint whirr rattling in his chassis. The woman’s eyes narrow, her grip on the crystal tight, and for a moment he thinks she does not understand. But then she settles back on her heels and asks, “No control module?”

“I took it out,” Cassian admits in a strained voice, uncertain why he’s telling her this. “Years ago.” He swallows, then adds, “No one knows.”

“A deliberate choice, to prevent my destruction,” Kay chimes in repressively, as if he thinks Cassian needs the reminder. “He was ordered to bolt me, or scrap me.”

“It wasn’t necessary,” Cassian mutters, a little embarrassed and not entirely certain why.

“It remains, thus far, the only order you have ever broken,” Kay says. “A statistical anomaly.”

Cassian waves his hand, a touch irritably. “Yes, well. I like to keep you on your toes.”

The woman nods as if she takes his sarcasm for sincerity, and then, abruptly, she’s gone.

“She is probably summoning reinforcements,” Kay says into the silence, punctuated only by the sound of crashing waves. “We should relocate immediately.”

Cassian finishes winding the mesh bandage around his hand and shoves the equipment back in the medkit roughly. The stamped box doesn’t quite fit, he probably shifted something out of place underneath it, but he no longer has the patience to adjust it. He forces the lid shut and latches it sourly. “We can’t move. We’ve been here an hour and the,” he gestures vaguely upward, reseating his blaster, “hunter hasn’t shown up, so it’s possible the tracking device only works when the ship is on.” He scoops the hammer off the table and wipes his bloody handprint from it, then walks determinedly back towards the hatch. “Keep an eye out. I’m going to finish my walkaround.”

“There is an eighteen percent chance the intruder is the hunter,” Kay warns him, but Cassian shakes his head. No, she could have simply shot him, if she wanted him dead or incapacitated. Instead, she came close (very close, he’ll have bruises in a few hours), and tried to figure him out. She had looked curious, wary, and deadly – but not, by any stretch of the imagination, Imperial.

And anyway, she was too surprised by him, by the…reaction of her crystal. (And _that_ is not been part of any bounty-collecting strategy he’s ever heard.)

There is something about the way she looks at him with her hand tight around that stone that makes him feel like he’s being stripped and examined, something about the way she looks at him so unflinchingly that makes him…alright with it.

She isn’t the hunter. He’s willing to stake his life on it.

Which means she’s a local, and yes, the word _witch_ has whispered through the back of his mind, but he has other things to worry about. She’s gone anyway.

Which is good. She attacked him. She barely spoke to him. It’s better that she leave. He has enough problems. Cassian steps back down to the beach and walks around the back of the U-Wing, and he is so focused on his hull that he nearly walks right into her.

Her knife is tucked in her belt now, but that’s all she gives him time to process. She walks straight up to him and grabs his wrist above his injured hand, pulling it up between them and setting her fingers against the tucked-in end of the bandage. She raises her head and looks at him, clearly waiting for…something. His response, he guesses.

“It’s nothing,” he says hesitantly.

She lifts her other hand; she’s holding something that looks like either a small red leather ball or…some kind of animal body part? Cassian flinches and tugs lightly on his hand. “No, no thank you. It’s really nothing.” The last thing he needs is alien animal blood or whatever local remedy she’s proposing smeared into his open cut.  

Her eyes narrow suddenly, she adjusts her grip so that her bare fingers slide down his sleeve and instead wrap around his hand. When her skin touches his, Cassian feels a series of small sparks crackling like static along his knuckles, and then a faint rainbow blooms from under her robe at her neck. The woman’s jaw clenches and she glowers at him as if he is somehow conspiring to annoy her. A moment later, the tingling in his hand and the colors from what he presumes is her crystal both fade. The woman clears her throat softly. “Amoxibacta.” When he doesn’t respond, she rolls her eyes at the confusion on his face. “It’s amoxibacta,” she repeats, holding the red thing closer to his face – on closer inspection, it looks more like some kind of sponge than a ball or, say, a liver. “A better strain for infection prevention than ampibacta. Cleaner. Less chance of anaphylactic reaction in most carbon-based species.”

Cassian realizes his mouth is hanging open and closes it with a snap. “It’s…bacta?”

“Yes.” She glares at him again, and taps a finger against the yellow bandage on his hand. “Blue Coral strain, derived from the Red Mud Sisters’ original seeding.” Her voice turns arch, dismissive. “Better than the weak strain the Raining Leaves cultivate.”

These people grow their own bacta strains? But that is notoriously difficult, requiring all kinds of precision equipment, complex organic ingredients, and careful, constant tending. Not the sort of thing he expects from…well, from a planet of mythical witches and no spaceports, comm traffic, or intergalactic presence.  

“Blue Coral Clan bacta,” she repeats meaningfully, as if he should understand the significance of that, and she taps his palm again, harder, impatient. Cassian studies her face carefully. She’s stoic, unruffled, but he’s spent his life looking for tells, relies on them for survival, so he sees the uncertain way her eyes flick momentarily to their joined hands, the tense set of her shoulders, the way her pulse is fluttering just a touch too fast in her throat (some distant instinct mutters that he’s close enough to see that, and he shouldn’t be).

Cassian relaxes his fingers and nods.

She unwinds the yellow mesh bandage with brisk efficiency, and then rubs the red thing against his torn skin. He’s right, it’s some kind of sponge, smearing a thin film of sweet-smelling gel over the injury. This bacta has a faint purple tinge to it, but it cools and soothes the sting as quickly as any other gel he’s used before. The woman resettles the bandage and tucks the sponge back into a pouch on her belt, but before she can move away, Cassian flips his hand in hers and gently grasps her wrist.

Her free hand flies to the knife handle at her belt, but he only says quietly, “Cassian,” and then waits.

She blinks, looks from their hands to his face, then says in a voice barely above a whisper, “Jyn.”

 

* * *

 

He gave her his name. His real name.

What in all the hells was he thinking?

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't read any source material on the Witches of Dathomir, so most of my knowledge comes from [the wookieepedia article](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Witches_of_Dathomir). I've added some headcanons about witches, Dathomir, and Cassian's history of my own, but I've tried to change as little as possible about the canon backstory for both Cassian and Jyn.


	2. fire and water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  

* * *

 

“You’re not from Scissorfists,” she says the next morning, when she appears outside his ship again just an hour or so after sunrise. She’s sitting cross-legged on top of a white boulder, watching him circle his ship for the tenth frustrating time. He doesn’t blame her for the scrutiny; he’s a stranger in her territory, and in her place he would keep a close eye, too. She’s pulled her robe up to reveal athletic legs bare from the mid-thigh down, her skin decorated with intricate green and blue patterns that seem to flow and ripple gently in the sunlight when he looks. It’s a little disconcerting, actually, so he’s making a point of not looking very often, or at least not for very long. He hasn’t figured out yet if the designs are permanent tattoos or more temporary paints, and he has to keep reminding himself that it hardly matters either way; he has bigger and much more life-threatening problems. There’s a streak of vivid red twisting down the left side of the boulder under her bare knee, and every time he glances at her, Cassian’s mental alarms shout that she’s bleeding and he needs to – well, it’s just that he keeps thinking that she’s _bleeding_.

It’s distracting. She’s a distraction. So far, she’s been a quiet distraction, watching him silently with an unreadable expression as he loops around his ship again and again.

“I’m not from Dathomir,” he corrects, and turns away to glower at the hull of the U-Wing. Distractions aside, he should have found the tracker by now. It’s not that big of a ship, with precious few places a foreign object could hide from the casual observer. And he’s been anything but casual as he scours the metal, looking for whatever has drawn his relentless pursuer down on him.

Nothing.

“I know,” she snaps, and Cassian risks another glance back at her. She has one hand wrapped around the crystal pendant again, the other flat on her bare knee, and she’s glaring at him as fiercely as he is glaring at his hull. “That doesn’t mean you’re not Clan.”

He blinks, not sure what to make of that. “I’m not from a Dathomiri clan.”

Jyn’s irritation morphs into a flat stare, as if he is being intentionally obtuse and she is unimpressed by it. “As I _said_. Is your hearing poor?”

He is reminded, rather forcefully, of Kay in one of his snippier moods, and has to turn away again in a hurry, this time to hide a smile. “Definitely not Scissorhands.”

“Fists,” she corrects. “Scissortfists. _Slampa_ who steal fish even when their own caches are full and worship their stupid grooved blades,” she mutters just loud enough for him to hear over the gentle crashing of the nearby waves. “They are selfish wretches and they don’t like strangers,” she raises her voice and calls to him as he circles around the starboard exhaust and pauses to inspect the interior funnel (again) and finds absolutely nothing _(again)._ “They don’t like anyone, but strangers mostly. Landing here was dangerous.”

“Yes, I heard this neighborhood had a problem with fish-thieving _slampa_ ,” Cassian replies absently, prodding a minor dent in the casing of the exhaust funnel with the hammer handle, venting a little of his frustration. “But the beach is always so nice this time of year. I couldn’t resist.”

She giggles. It’s a soft sound, quickly swallowed, but it’s so at odds with the wary, judgmental way she has been watching him that Cassian stops short and spins on his heel to look at her again. She’s still fiddling with the crystal, but her other hand is clamped over her face, which is turning a little pink with stifled mirth.

“What?”

“The way you said that,” she gasps, dropping her hand and clearly struggling to get her expression under control. “Shhlaaam-pa-hah,” she drawls in a terrible mimicry of his accent.

Cassian coughs a little to hide an unexpected laugh that marginally lifts his dark mood, and drops to one knee to look up at the underside of the exhausts, which makes the blossoming bruises on his chest and back twinge and brings his mood right back down again. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“It’s an ugly word, Offworlder,” she tells him. “For an ugly creature.” She chuckles again, and shakes her head, leaning back on her hands and tilting her face to the sun. In an offhand tone, she adds, “How can you make even that word sound musical?”

Cassian slips on the white pebbles as he stands up, and he clips his shoulder on the exhaust before he rights himself. He opens his mouth to ask _what?_ but at the last second, sanity reasserts itself. This is not a good time to be chattering with natives. He needs to find this tracker, he needs to get off this planet, and he _needs_ to get back to Command. He’s been out of contact for almost two days past his last scheduled check-in time. He’s keeping his dead man’s switch active, which should prevent his swansong from transmitting back to the Alliance and making them scramble to fill the many holes his death would leave in Intelligence’s structure (it’s been a bad enough year, and they can’t really afford to lose a higher-order field operative right now, not when things are already barely holding together, with rumors of a massive new Imperial weapon on the horizon). However, Kay calculates that the distortionary field around Dathomir has a sixty-five percent chance of interfering with his dead man’s switch signal. The Alliance might ping his comm and get nothing at all, which would be just as bad as his swansong, possibly worse because they might think him captured and compromised.

No, he has no time to play at games with a nice local girl, no matter how sharp her dagger or how curiously advanced her knowledge of bacta. He needs to get back to the war, and his mission.

He glares at the pock-marked but tracker-free surface of the U-Wing, until he hears the clanging of metal behind him, and the hatch grinds open. “I have concluded my long-term scenario calculations,” Kay announces from just inside the doorframe.

Jyn unfolds her legs and hangs them over the edge of the boulder, her boots kicking in the air idly, the blue and green marks on her skin rippling again under the reddish sunlight. It’s like watching unfamiliar but graceful creatures swimming lazily under the surface of a pond. Cassian catches himself trying to puzzle out the meaning of a long, trailing line of what might be stars down her calf, and wrenches his attention back to the U-Wing.

He grunts at Kay, and forces his fingers into the emergency grip-hold cleverly hidden in the hull by a small metal flap. He’s already climbed up and searched the top of the U-Wing, but he’s out of ideas. The metal flap sticks a bit; he needs to oil the tiny hinges, or at least clean some of the red-stained sand from the beach out of them. He hauls himself up and stretches up for the next grip-hold, which is just out of sight over the curve of the hull.

“I have determined,” Kay says loudly after it becomes clear that Cassian does not intend to ask, “that you are doomed.”

“Thanks,” Cassian replies absently, feeling around the warm metal. His fingernails catch, ah, there it is. He works his hand into the grip-hold and pulls, awkwardly kicking his toes into the one he had just left. Whoever designed the path up to the top of the U-Wing hadn’t been thinking of Humans when they did it.

Behind him, he can hear Jyn’s boot heels tapping against the boulder in a gentle thrumming beat. “Charming, your friend.”

Cassian snorts and hauls himself up another rung on the hidden ladder. It occurs to him far too late that this is probably how she got on top of his ship, too. These grip-holds are well-disguised in the metal, though, so either she was poking around his ship far longer than he knew, or she’s familiar with this model of craft. Either option is…hmmm. “He means well.”

“Your doom has two possible forms,” Kay continues, ignoring their interjections. “Technically it has infinite forms,” he corrects almost immediately, honest to the point of pedantry. “Given the commonly accepted theorem that the universe is infinite and everything is possible. But in this case, you are _probably_ doomed in two specific ways.”

“Good to know.” The last grip-hold just before he can heave himself on top of the U-Wing is also just out of sight over the curve of the hull, and the red sun has really started to heat the metal by this point. It doesn’t help Cassian’s concentration that he keeps glancing up at the sky, half-expecting to see an Imperial ship bursting through the clouds and aimed straight for him. It’s been almost five hours, and no sign of their bounty hunter, but that could mean…anything, really.

“The first probability,” Kay calls as Cassian finally feels out the last grip-hold (it’s even more stuck than the first one; he really needs to do some maintenance on this ship), “is that the bounty hunter will find us before we can disable the tracker, and we will be forced to fight to the death against a superior force.”

“So, a Tuesday,” Cassian mutters, taking a deep breath and balancing himself carefully (and remaining completely unmoved by the muffled chuckle down below, because he’s well past the age when making a pretty girl laugh flusters him). He can’t dead-lift himself up to the top with just one hand; he’ll have to simultaneously jump from the lower grip-hold and drag himself up to the upper hold. He’s done it twice so far without falling to the rocky beach, he’s gotten the hang of it by now.

“The second probability, which is becoming increasingly likely,” Kay is standing directly beneath him now. At least if he falls, he will have several kilos of metal and machinery to cushion his landing. Cassian tenses, then leaps, just as Kay concludes, “You will go native and settle here with Jyn.”

His hand slips on the upper grip-hold, and Cassian’s chest slams painfully against the bend in the hull, knocking the breath from him and forcing him to scramble wildly at the smooth metal before he plunges down the side. He manages to get a grip on one of the small antennas embedded nearby, and heaves himself up. He presses his forehead to the warm metal for a moment, wheezing, and then sits up and peers down the side of the U-Wing. “ _What?_ ”

Jyn’s feet have stopped drumming on the boulder, but her posture still seems relaxed, her face neutral. She’s watching him with her head tilted to the side, as if he were some curious bird that has caught her passing interest. She does not, thankfully, seem particularly offended. Cassian clears his throat and rubs surreptitiously at his aching ribs.

“We are, for all intents and purposes,” Kay explains calmly, as if he has said something perfectly reasonable, “trapped on this planet. To depart without finding the tracker will only result in continued pursuit, which will necessitate that we avoid any Alliance-aligned or Imperial-controlled fuel depots. Eventually, we would be killed or captured.”

Jyn’s gaze shifts from Cassian to Kay at the word “tracker,” and as he speaks, she leans further forward, her expression turning intent. Cassian suppresses a wince, because he hadn’t intended to tell her…. _any_ of this. He’s willing to bet that she’s not the hunter herself, nor likely to run off and draw the hunter in for the sake of a share of the bounty. But he certainly hadn’t intended to ever say the word “Alliance” around her. Dathomir is not part of the war, and so isolated that it’s entirely possible she doesn’t even know what the Alliance _is_ , but even the people of Dathomir have to know about the Empire. The question is…are they _loyal_ to it?

On the other hand, Kay has hopefully run the numbers on that probability, and concluded that it was unlikely enough to risk this speech around Jyn.

“Possibly,” Cassian scowls and lets his legs dangle over the side, bracing his hands on his thighs and forcing himself not to rub at his chest anymore. At this rate, he isn’t going to get off this rock without broken ribs.

“ _Probably_ ,” Kay corrects, aggrieved. “That means we will be stuck here for a not-insignificant period of time. Given the isolation, your personal preferences, and your current interactions, it is highly likely that you will establish a rapport with _her._ ” Kay raises a metal hand and jabs it in Jyn’s direction. His original voicebox programming never allowed for much inflection, and was limited to barely three hundred words, but Cassias muses privately that no one who heard him speak now would ever know that. Thinly veiled disdain and open suspicion color his words.

Jyn looks at Kay’s accusing digits, then at Cassian, her eyebrow raised. He raises his hands, palms up, and she rolls her eyes and kicks her feet again, idly.

“At some point,” Kay continues, dropping his hand but not his condescending tone, “she will likely introduce you to her tribe – “

Jyn holds up a finger. “Clan.”

“Clan. And after some friction and general distrust, you will learn their language and their culture, and likely become involved in local politics. You are suitably skilled in combat – “

“Thanks,” Cassian pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I’ve seen better,” Jyn calls dryly, and he sighs (lightly, so as not to disturb the knee-shaped bruises on his chest).

“Which will earn you the respect of the clan. Possibly they will grant you a name that coincides with their cultural conventions.”

“Falls From The Sky,” Jyn offers. Cassian glowers at her. Her mouth curves into a smirk, though her voice is innocent. “Falls From His Ship?”

“Very funny.”

Kay nods briefly, as if their commentary is only proving his point. “At which point, you will marry – or bond, join, or whatever term the locals use to describe a permanent state of partnership – with Jyn.”

Cassian holds his breath (a sharp spike of pain lances through his ribs, ah, not his best idea), but Jyn still looks mildly amused, leaning back on her hands again and kicking her feet.

“Of course, either the bounty hunter will then appear at last, or potentially some other member of the Alliance will find us. Either will cause an unpleasant confrontation, forcing you to chose between your old life or your new life.”

Cassian gives up. “And which will I choose?”

Kay hums, his servos whirring thoughtfully. “The odds are currently at an equilibrium,” he says at last. “If you attempt to remain here, the intruder will attempt to kill you. If you attempt to leave,” he raises his hand again, “she will.”

Jyn frowns. “He can leave when he likes. I won’t stop him.”

“Not _now,_ ” Kay says petulantly. “After he has converted to your culture and married you.”

“Kay,” Cassian scrubs both hands over his face and rakes them through his hair. “Have you been watching those historical drama holovids again?”

“They are common tropes for a reason, Cassian,” Kay straightens indignantly. “If there was not significant statistical evidence that people behaved in a certain pattern in certain conditions, then audiences would not connect with those stories on such a wide-spread – “

“We marry,” Jyn interrupts, and Cassian’s eyes fly open. “Not bond, or join. We marry our lovers, if we want to. If they want to. The Blue Coral Clan does, anyway,” she shrugs deliberately, pushing back her cloak and lifting her newly bared arms to display even more blue and green patterns painted down her skin. “We do not keep slaves,” she concludes, as if the two are related.

“Slaves,” Cassian repeats flatly.

Jyn lowers her arms, her body language turning wary at his sudden shift in tone. “Men,” she says slowly, and it takes him a moment to understand.

“Men are slaves on Dathomir.”

Jyn tugs her cloak back over her shoulders, hiding her arms and drawing her legs up in front of her. “In some clans.” Her face is inscrutable now, a mirror match to the neutral expression he is taking care to keep on his own, and she tilts her head down but he is certain she is watching him through her eyelashes. He can feel the pressure of her attention, sharp like a blade resting lightly against the back of his neck. Cassian waits.

“There are some clans who will just kill you,” Jyn tells him at last, detached and calm. “But most will try to take you as a slave. They’ll treat you alright, unless they’re Nightsisters.” Her voice drops into a disgusted growl on the last word, her face twisting, then she smooths it out. “Blue Coral welcomes all who are honorable and brave.”

Cassian remembers the look on her face when she had asked about his ownership of Kay, and some of the tension in his stomach eases. “No slaves?”

Jyn shakes her head. “We prefer our men to be willing,” she says, and then colors slightly. “When we care about them. Men. Some don’t.” She stops speaking abruptly, and turns to look at the ocean with a wholly disinterested expression, as if nothing they’ve discussed is in any way worth noting. She pulls her blaster from the holster under her cloak and checks the ammo clip, flips it sideways and unhooks the barrel in order to inspect the interior for cleanliness. Cassian learned to suppress his own urge to fidget long ago, but he recognizes the redirect technique in her determined, precise movements.

“Dathomir is listed as a matriarchal society,” Kay offers. “It is a common historical trend in underdeveloped societies for lower class citizens to face discrimination from upper classes.”

Jyn’s frown deepens at “underdeveloped,” but she doesn’t lash back at the accusation.

“I suppose,” Cassian says into the uncomfortable silence, “I should be grateful to have landed so close to the Blue Coral Clan, then.”

Jyn shifts her weight on the boulder, and the skin on the back of Cassian’s neck tightens. He catches her gaze even from up here on the U-Wing, and she clears her throat before re-arranging her expression back to neutral. “This is Scissorfists’ territory.”

The waves crash softly on the pebbled beach, and Cassian tries not to spin around and scan the cliffs behind him. Below, Jyn lifts her chin and meets his eyes, solemn, her hand around her crystal again, and the questions are on the tip of his tongue – _are they likely to find me here?_   _What are_ you _doing here, then? Why do you stay? Does it have to do with why you thought I wasn’t real? What did it mean when your necklace glowed in our hands?_

“Incidentally,” Kay’s voice suddenly seems dangerously loud, although he has not raised his volume, “capture and enslavement by locals is now the fifth-most-likely scenario.”

He huffs an unamused laugh and scratches at his chin, noting absently that his beard is getting a little longer than he typically likes. “Is there any scenario where I’m not doomed?”

Jyn pushes herself off her boulder and drops lightly to her feet. Her cloak closes around her, and Cassian watches as she strides down the beach until she vanishes around the distant edge of the nearest cliff. Below him, Kay whirs.

“Rejecting all scenarios with a probability lower than twenty percent,” Kay whirs a little more. “No.”

Cassian sits on the U-Wing for several more minutes watching the base of the cliff, sweating a little in the hot sunlight, but she doesn’t reappear.

 

* * *

 

The scrape on his hand vanishes within twenty hours, without even the customary itching sensation that usually lingers on his skin after a bacta application. Whatever the Dathomiri are putting in their bacta, it’s better than any of the strains the Alliance has managed to beg, borrow, and steal. If they could get the Dathomir to bargain…

He tucks that knowledge away, and carefully does not wonder who will be sent to follow up on that possibility after he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

“I have sliced into the nearest system comm buoy,” Kay informs him, looming over Cassian’s prone form. His heavy black feet are only centimeters from Cassian’s left ear on the deck, close enough that he can feel the heat radiating from Kay’s metal body. The deck is also too warm to be completely comfortable, but it’s preferable to laying on the uncomfortable white pebbles of the beach. Really, he shouldn’t be laying down at all; he should be running yet another inspection of his ship, or out foraging for supplies, since his rations won’t last forever, or perhaps just scouting the local terrain. At the least, he ought to be brainstorming how he is going to get off this planet.

But frustration can be as much of a killer as any Imperial blaster, Cassian learned that lesson years ago. So despite his restless anger and increasingly tense muscles, he falls back on patience drills, one of the first things he was taught when he began sniper training. Lie still, breathe in, breathe out, find a fixed point and keep your mind on that, and only that. The fixed point can be physical, or abstract, so long as it can hold attention. Cassian has chosen a long shallow scratch on the overhead of his cargo bay. It’s about ten centimeters long, curves slightly to the right, and is about three shades paler grey than the rest of the battered metal. Cassian lays on his back and stares at the scratch, noting every tiny wiggle in the line, every fleck of dirt and every glint of light on the scratch. There is nothing but the scratch. No bugged ship. No dangerous Imperial bounty hunter. No crashing waves and no local women, just the long shallow scratch. There is only the scratch.

The scratch, and now, Kay.

“The frequency distortion on Dathomir allowed me to sneak a signal piggyback to some passing message traffic,” Kay continues from two meters away, his domed head blocking out the bottom edge of the scratch from Cassian’s view.

He sighs, and lets himself emerge from the patience drill. “Did we get mail?”

“I was not looking for messages,” Kay does not move, but his posture now seems to indicate admonishment. Someday Cassian is going to ask him how he does that. “I was checking for the bounty hunter’s registry in the system. If our Imperial-hired pursuer followed us to this system, they would likely flash their IFF at the local buoys, to notify Imperial customs control that they were operating legally in this space.”

Cassian nods. He knows all this, of course, but Kay has a tendency to lay out all relevant data when he’s making a point. Interrupting or asking him to skip things usually just results in Kay getting huffy and starting all over again. “Are they here?”

“Yes.”

Cassian sighs again, closes his eyes and focuses on the feeling of ridged metal against his shoulder blades. Idly he wonders when was the last time he cleaned this floor. Can’t remember. Probably best not to think about it.

“They have not found us.”

Cassian squints up at him. “Obviously.”

“It is not obvious,” Kay huffs indignantly (or as close as a being with no lungs can come to huffing). “They may well have found us and are awaiting backup.”

“Kay,” Cassian folds his hands on his stomach and closes his eyes again. When was the last time he slept? Can’t remember that either. Definitely best not to think about it. “I am a single Human male. You are a single droid. Why would they need backup?”

Kay whirs for a moment. “I am a combat grade droid,” he says at last.

Cassian flicks a finger dismissively. “And I’m expert qualified in over three dozen projectile weapons, marksman in about twenty more, plus explosive ordnance checked and proficient in hand-to-hand combat. Even if they know all that, we’re still only two people.”

“Recent events suggest that you could use a refresher on your hand-to-hand combat.”

He scowls, feeling the ache of bruises all down his chest, but doesn’t rise to the bait.

“They don’t know where we are,” Kay says again. “I confirmed it with their IFF check ins.”

“Noted.”

“But it is plausible that they _could_ have known, and wanted back up.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I am very dangerous.”

“Hm.”

“Are you going to lie there for the foreseeable future?”

“No,” Cassian grimaces against the strain on his bruises and forces himself upright. “Let’s peel a few of the access panels off, see if the tracker’s in the storage cubbies, okay?”

“Would you like to know the odds – “

“No. Thanks. I’ll start on the starboard side if you start on the port.”

 

* * *

 

The smell hits him first, a thick, cloying scent that reminds him of the oil used in personal speeders and grav cars, not dense enough for starships but too dense for droids. It’s too hot to work inside the shut down U-Wing, and he can’t turn it on to get the atmo-control working. So he’s sitting in the open hatch of the U-Wing in the gentle ocean breeze, fiddling with Kay’s spare internal scanner, trying to tune it to the most likely frequencies of a tracker device. If the damn tracker somehow got into the internal workings of the U-Wing, the engine compartments or the fuel tracks, for example, he would have to tear his ship apart to find it, which would leave him just as stranded but now with a broken ship. But if he can get the scanner tuned properly, perhaps he can pinpoint the tracker before he has to start pulling up panels and disconnecting wires.

It’s a long shot, but he’s running out of options.

At first he’s so absorbed in the fiddly, delicate work that he barely notes the faint stench suddenly tainting the salty air. But in a few minutes, it goes from faint to overwhelming, and then his shoulders tense under the sensation of eyes watching him, like a blade delicately held to the back of his neck. He jerks up, his hand flying to his blaster (Cassian Andor is nobody’s slave, not Imperials, not Dathomiri, _nobody_ ) and then stills as he sees the lone figure rising from the waves.

Her cloak is tied in some kind of bundle over her shoulders again, revealing what looks like a blue sleeveless shirt hanging untucked over the dark cut off trousers that reach to her mid-thigh. A few small, neat pouches attach at her hip to a thick leather belt, her boots knotted by the laces and hanging from the other side. The material of the soaked shirt look machine-made; the trousers and boots are clearly some kind of hide but made expertly and more or less in the style of modern merchants, or perhaps mercenaries. Her arms and legs have only green markings this time – it appears that the blue marks, at least, were only painted on after all. Her blaster is gone, but her bone handled knife is hanging clearly at her side, no longer tucked away behind the material of her cloak. She still looks wild, but the clothes are definitely modern, and almost respectable if they weren't soaking wet. Cassian laughs at himself internally, and banishes any lingering images of savages staring in awe at his advanced technology. Dathomir may be isolated, but it’s becoming more and more apparent that they have at least kept an eye on the galaxy around them. Probably there’s some trade hub he’s never heard of somewhere on the planet.

The large bundle wrapped in her cloak, however, looks nothing like anything he’s seen before, until she comes to an abrupt halt at his feet and swings the bundle around to drop it in the pebbles. The cloak falls open with a faint squelch.

Cassian blinks at the confusing mass of wet silver veils wrapped sloppily around something pink and rubbery, and smells like oil mixed with salt and possibly blood.

“It’s not even my Name Day,” he makes a weak attempt to joke. Jyn gives him an unimpressed look and folds her arms. Cassian pokes at the lump tentatively with his booted toe. It doesn’t move, and the smell is definitely coming from it.

Jyn raps her knuckle against his knee, and he retracts his foot. “Brikka-fish.”

Cassian’s eyebrows inch upward. “This is a fish?” He squints at the mass, trying to imagine it swimming in the water. All he can picture is a lump of grey laundry drifting through the currents. The pink thing in the middle is probably the body, but from here it mostly just looks like a ball. Jyn kneels and tugs the veils, or fins, he supposes, away to reveal…yes, definitely just a big wobbly pink ball. He keeps his face blank.

Jyn flips the pink ball over, and he sees a wide, gaping circle ringed with jagged red teeth.

“It tastes better than it looks,” she says, and her voice is casual but her shoulders are tight, her eyes wary. He watches her trace her fingers lightly around the creature’s deadly mouth, once, twice, drawing a little symbol at the apex of the circle. She murmurs something in a language he doesn’t recognize, but it starts with a note of triumph, and ends with a mournful whisper. And then she flips her knife from her belt and stabs it briskly into the mouth, slicing at the blood-red gums at the base of the vicious teeth. There’s a small, linen bandage wrapped around her right wrist, and a few specks of blood darken the edge. A fresh cut – or, he glances at the creature’s mouth – a bite.

Cassian sets the scanner down on the deck next to him and props his elbows on his knees. “I spent a few months on Taris, once,” he says conversationally. “Old Republic world, mostly just endless ruined cities half-sunk into a swamp.” He grimaces, remembering the planet-wide bog full of people in mud-stained clothes and enormous swamp trees that had risen from the ancient wrecks like giant green pillars. He isn’t clear on what, precisely, had happened to Taris centuries ago to leave it so desolate, it’s people building narrow walkways over the thick beds of black moss on collapsed stone walls, skimming along murky flooded streets in shallow-bottomed boats and gondolas. But the whole place had left him feeling gloomy and in desperate need of a long shower, afterwards.

“My cont- the person who was working with me at the time,” he chooses his words delicately, fascinated by the clean, efficient way that Jyn slices the pink creature into evenly-proportioned ribbons and yanks flexible translucent bones from the flesh. “He asked me to eat a local ceremonial dish to, ah, prove I was sincere that I cared about his people. It was some kind of amphibious creature that had evolved in the deep swamps, out where people rarely ventured. The geligator, but they called it “glass jaw.” It was…” he frowns, tries to recall the exact features of the bizarre thing. “Clear. Translucent, I mean,” he elaborates as she glances up, her hands now stained red with a small pile of clear fish bones on one side and ropey pink ribbons on the other. “You could see all the internal organs, which were…green and black mostly, like the rest of the planet. Except the heart. It had one central heart, shaped like a…hm, like a spike, or a blade. And it had black claws about this long,” he holds his fingers apart a several centimeters. Jyn’s eyebrows lift, but more in appreciation than skepticism, he’s gratified to note. “Apparently, the ritual required me to eat the heart, while it was still beating.”

Jyn pauses in the middle of gathering the gauzy silver fins, red blood dripping from her fingers down the swirling grooves in the large membranes, and stares at him.

Cassian shrugs. “It was a bit…” he waves a hand randomly, hunting for the word, “soupy. Tough outer skin, but the inside was mostly liquid.”

Jyn blinks. “Soupy.”

“On the inside.”

She squints at him. “You’re teasing me.”

“I wish.”

“You ate a creature’s beating heart.”

“It only beat for the first couple of bites.”

She snorts and returns her attention to the dismembered fish. “Savage,” she says dismissively, but he can see the edge of her smile despite her effort to hide it.

“My orders were to get the supplies at all costs. The heart got me three shipments worth of high-grade explosives and remote detonators,” he clasps his hands together to keep them from fidgeting as he shoves away the familiar way the words _at all costs_ curdles in his stomach _._ “I’ve done worse for less.”

“I’m not giving you any bombs,” Jyn picks up one of the bones and spears a pink ribbon on one end. She twists it until the flesh is wound in a tight ball at one end of the translucent stick, and then starts on another. “But you can have some of my brikka-fish.” She quirks an eyebrow at him. “I’m going to cook mine first.”

“To each their own,” he says mildly, and forgets to hide his grin when she laughs.

 

* * *

 

He helps her build a small fire pit filled with driftwood in the shelter of the U-Wing, away from the cliffs. He stands to fetch the firestarter in his emergency survival kit, but before he can step fully away, he hears the snap of fire and feels heat blooming on the back of his legs. When he whirls around, Jyn is serenely wedging the fish-bone roasting sticks into the white stones around a small but roaring fire, the pink meat of the brikka-fish already crisping around the edges.

Cassian operates almost exclusively in urban environments, so he’s certainly no expert on things like camp fires, but he’s almost sure they take much more time to build than the few seconds his attention had been turned away. He opens his mouth to ask what she just did to defy physics, but Jyn catches his expression and smiles slightly, her nose wrinkling in amusement. The fire burns with a variety of fascinating colors, the reflection of it makes Jyn’s eyes turn wild and strange, a nebula burning inside her. If there was any magic in the galaxy, this is what it would look like.

Cassian closes his mouth and sits back down by the fire.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jyn is from the [Blue Coral Divers Clan](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Blue_Coral_Divers_Clan), which is a canon clan (that did not take men as slaves, and had a feud with Scissorfists). There isn't much to go on for the clan, so I took the "divers" part to mean that they liked to fish by jumping in the water and stabbing their prey. Or at least, Jyn does. 
> 
> The brikka-fish is my own invention, and I imagine it being something like an octopus but with beta fish fins instead of tentacles, and shark teeth instead of a beak. Roasted over a driftwood fire, it tastes delicious.
> 
> [Taris](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Taris) is a canon planet that was once a ecumenopolis like Coruscant until a Sith showed up and ruined everyone's day. The planet's now a swamp with old ruins poking out of it. There are apparently some skyscrapers rising above the polluted atmosphere where the rich live, but I figured Cassian's work would be down in the squalor where the majority of the population lives, scraping by in the dense swamps and ruined city structures. Rich people don't rebel against the system that makes them rich.
> 
> The geligator, and the custom of eating it's beating heart, are my own weird invention.


	3. question and answer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  

Cassian’s hand cramps, and he curses under his breath as the duplexer slips from his poor grip. Metal clangs as the part falls away from the place he has precariously wedged it inside the scanner and drops to the deck next to the pilot’s chair. Cassian kicks it a little sulkily. When it’s not installed inside Kay, the scanner has precious little power of it’s own, which means dismal scanning range. He can fix the power problem, but then the duplexer won’t properly calibrate, and the scanner will just become a transmitter (and making a lot of pointless comm noise is the last thing Cassian needs to be doing right now). So he’s trying to cobble together a more appropriate duplexer out of…whatever junk he can sort from his minimal cargo space.

It’s not going well.

He thunks the partially dismantled scanner onto the console and rubs his cramping hand ruefully. Through the forward viewport, he has a lovely view of the purple ocean, turning pinkish across the top as the sun sinks over the cliffs behind him. If he weren’t in such a dire situation (he’s diligent with his dead man’s switch, but has no way of knowing if the Alliance is receiving his signals – no idea if they think him dead, or worse), this would be peaceful.

“My mother sent this,” Jyn says softly from behind him, and Cassian nearly jumps out of his skin. He does jump out of the pilot seat, only just managing to do it without stumbling. From the outside, he is almost sure he looks composed, if a bit startled. Inside, his heartrate has rocketed through the damn roof. He takes care to keep his breathing light and normal, however, and his jaw unclenched. Shoulders relaxed. It’s been a long time since anyone has been able to sneak up on him like that; usually he’s the one slipping closer while a mark’s back is turned, eyeing their vital spots and clutching his fingers tight around his vibroblade, or blaster, or syringe or -

Cassian focuses. “Your what?”

“My mother,” Jyn repeats a touch impatiently, and holds up a bundle of rough cloth. Ah, no, it’s a piece of tanned hide, wrapped tightly around something squarish.

Cassian looks from the bundle to Jyn’s face. “Your mother.”

“Even savages on backwater planets have mothers, Offworlder,” she rolls her eyes, then pauses. “Are there no mothers on your world?”

He’s not sure if it’s meant as a tease or an honest question, and opens his mouth to brush it off. "Not for me," he hears himself say instead. "Not anymore."

Now it’s her turn to look startled, though she hides it almost as fast as he did, earlier. She thrusts the bundle at him and retreats to the safety of the beach outside, leaving Cassian holding something surprisingly light for it’s size. He flips the hide back and blinks.

A Courier Communications Scanner. An older model, clearly repaired in at least two places, but at first glance, in good working order. These things are not easy to come by outside of the Core, and not terribly popular in the mainstream because they can only receive, not transmit. Cassian’s brain automatically starts to break down the parts and reassemble them in the spare KX scanner he’s been fiddling with – yes, the waveline guides would significantly improve his scanning power without adding transmission noise that might give him away to the bounty hunter, and the duplexer is _significantly_ better than the junk he was trying to patch together earlier…

“You have informed your clan of our presence,” Kay’s voice cuts through his mental workshopping like a blade. “I calculated a fifty-three percent chance that you would. Have you informed them of Cassian’s gender and status as unclaimed slave, as well?”

 _Slave_ burns away the rest of Cassian’s distracted haze, and he strides to the open hatch to see Jyn standing with her arms crossed and her feet braced, her cloak open and fluttering around her in the breeze. The embroidery on the cloak seems to shift and flow the longer he looks at it, so Cassian keeps his eyes firmly on Jyn’s stiff shoulders and defiant posture.

“No,” she says shortly, and then seems to sense Cassian’s presence, whirling around to look up at him. He holds her gaze for a long moment, and marvels a little to himself at how the bright green seems to overpower even the reddish light from Dathomir’s sun. That doesn’t even seem possible, the light should have turned her eyes a muddier color, but they remain vividly and unmistakably green. The word _magic_ ghosts through the back of his head, then vanishes again.

Jyn’s expression softens, and she holds up her hands. The blue and green marks twine around her wrists and up her bare, toned arms – he wonders if they swirl across her chest under the heavy sleeveless tunic she wears, if they curl down her stomach and around the swell of her hips and dovetail perfectly with the markings he can see twisting down her shins and into her boots. “I did not tell my Matriarch,” she promises him. “Force witness me, Offworlder, I’ve told only my mother.” She wrinkles her nose, her voice suddenly sounding…young. A tiny bit petulant. “And only because she figured it out. Somehow.”

“She must have seen us landing,” Kay says, but Jyn shakes her head.

“My mother was once a Guardian of the Whills. She says the Force sets a path for all things, and she is more adept than most at finding that path.” Jyn looks a little uncertain now, shifting her weight slowly from one foot to the other, and then she shrugs and gives Cassian a small smile. “The Morning Sister says it is just a thing that all mothers do. Know things their children would rather keep hidden, I mean.”

The knots in Cassian’s stomach unwind a little. It seems unlikely that Jyn has sold him to her clan as a slave, if she’s bringing him complex machinery and telling him stories about her mother. So he pushes away the paranoid whispers and sits down on the edge of the hatch. There’s a perfectly good bench in the cargo hold of the U-Wing, complete with fold-out table, but Jyn clearly prefers to be out on the beach, and he’s not ready to walk away from this conversation just yet. He pulls the KX scanner he’s been working over to his side and sets the courier scanner on his thigh. Jyn watches him settle, then takes a hesitant step back, as if she means to leave him to his business.

Cassian pops open the courier’s main access hatch and asks as casually as he can. “Morning Sister?”

“Part of the Matriarch’s Council,” Jyn answers after a beat, and takes a cautious step toward him. “Responsible for the bacta crops. And the vats.”

Cassian nods. Bacta, right. Jyn’s people grew bacta. He has nothing to bargain with right now, but perhaps, when he’s clear of this particular mess, he can return on behalf of the Alliance and try to open a new line of bacta trade with the Dathomiri. With Blue Coral Clan, anyway. Or perhaps it would be wiser to send female operatives, who will appeal more to the Dathomiri culture. The thought is surprisingly disappointing.

“Sun Sister commands the animals,” Jyn continues, and steps a little closer. Cassian makes an encouraging hum, and jerks his chin in an offhand gesture towards the empty space on the other side of the courier scanner, as if he invites armed strangers to sit within reach of him all the time and it’s no big deal. He makes a show of looking around for his toolkit, which is sitting in the middle of the cargo bay behind him where he abandoned it a few hours ago.

He almost asks _does the clan have many animals?_ But the wary look in her eye warns him not to push for anything that might seem like intelligence gathering on her home. So instead, he unclips a few wires from the courier’s interior and asks, “You like animals?”

“At least one,” is her enigmatic response, and then she seems to come to a decision; she marches over to the empty space and hops up, perching herself on the edge of the hatch next to him. She hooks her fingertips into the toolkit and drags it close, fishing inside until she finds the wrench that Cassian was just about to ask for, and holding it out to him. His fingers brush hers as he takes it, and neither of them react. At all.

“Sounds like a lot of sisters,” he says to break the silence.

Jyn nods. “We are all sisters. In a way. Though my mother and I are not really - ” she cuts off abruptly, and Cassian makes a point of not raising his head, or reacting in any visible way. He has to be careful with these tiny screws anyway – if he drops one in the pebbles below he might never find it again. If he pushes her too far, she will vanish into the forest around the cliffs again.

“Dusk Sister keeps the clan’s secrets,” Jyn says, as if she had not stumbled onto anything personal a moment ago. “Supposedly she knows all secrets, whether we tell her or not, because the Force whispers to her. She’s also supposed to have dreams of the future. But Moon Sister says that no clan has had a Blessed One as a Dusk Sister for decades. Dusk Sisters just learn to be observant and smart.” She snorts. “And nosy.”

“Moon Sister is another Council member?”

She nods. “In charge of hunting, and battle.” She taps his wrist suddenly with two fingers, and he stills. “Splice the duplexer with the phase lock loop – the red wire, there. This model has a problem with transmitter leakage.”

Cassian follows where she’s pointing and tugs at the wire. “Then I’ll have to add a line to the code to make the duplexer regulate the voltage controlled oscillator,” he muses.

“Or your frequency will keep drifting while you’re scanning,” she agrees.

“I don’t see an input interface.”

“Here,” she scoots a little closer and wedges her fingernail into a tiny slot he hadn’t noticed before, and flips open a small panel. “Had to hardwire in a portable scanner’s touch screen, because the original keys stopped working.” She shoots him a small, almost shy smile that runs up his spine like a caress, “I wasn’t as careful with my gear, as a child.”

He swallows, and forces his voice to stay light. “The first droid I ever worked on, I forced the memory drive into the wrong slot in the processor core. I should have realized it shouldn’t be so hard to insert a standard drive into a standard slot, but in my defense,” he holds up a hand against her smirk, “I was eight, and everything felt harder for me than the adults working around me. I assumed that it was just my weak little boy fingers letting me down again.”

He wiggles his fingers at her as he says it, and her smirk changes to an amused smile. “What happened to the droid?” She points to the side, where Kay is making yet another circuit of the U-Wing, looking for the tracker (after all, Cassian’s inferior organic optics might have missed something). “Was it…?”

“No, not him. Astromech. Poor thing started squealing in Binary so fast I couldn’t understand it. Turns out she was reciting the Saga of Shar’kak, backwards.”

She laughs, and Cassian grins at her ruefully. “The worst part was that no one could stop her from running through the whole program without forcing open her chassis while activated. The head tech decided that it was safer to just let her finish the saga, and then power her down and pull the wedged chip out.”

“How long is the Saga of Shar’kak, in Binary?”

He coughs, ducks his head. “About three and a half hours.”

“Did any of the other children make that mistake?” Her tone is thoughtful, but a little too careful to be totally natural.

Cassian raises his head and looks at her, because he’s heard worse attempts to pry information about someone’s past, but not many. Jyn has the grace to wince, but she doesn’t take it back. She looks him right in the eye and raises her chin, challenging.

He considers lying, but the memory of her laugh is a little too fresh (it has to be the failed missions, he decides privately; all the failure and frustration and fear of a massive weapon that he can’t seem to actually _find_ has built up in him until he’s so wound up from it all that he’s willing to spill his guts to the first person who offers him a release valve). Cassian clears his throat and drops his eyes back to the tangled guts of the courier scanner.

“No,” he says at length. “I was the only person below twenty assigned to the droid repair bays. My uncles and aunts were droid merchants and techs, before – before they died.”

“My mother’s friend taught me to slice droids,” Jyn tells him, because she understands his offer of a fair exchange. A story for a story. A truth for a truth. “And lots of other things, but mostly droids, at first. He brings – used to bring – all sorts of tech from around the galaxy and then tell me to dismantle it. But there was always a,” she pauses to hunt around in the toolkit for a wire stripper when she sees him comparing two wires from the courier to one another thoughtfully, and hands it to him before he can ask, “Always a trap,” she continues. “Or a trick.” Her voice drops into a rough rumble, what he assumes is a mimic of her mother’s friend. “Slice this memory core before it deletes itself, Jyn. Unlock this datapad before it self-destructs. Find the line of deactivation code I wrote in Bochee in this remote detonator before it blows up the grenade I hid in your tree house.”

Cassian startles, staring at her, and she shrugs. “Painful lessons are the lessons best learned.”

“I never had a treehouse,” he admits. “No trees, where I was born.”

“Or on the rebel base,” she adds a little sharply, and Cassian clenches his jaw against the instinctive surge of fear. It’s not like he’s been hiding it from her.

“Plenty of trees on some of those,” he says mildly. “But not many treehouses. Guard posts, but that’s not the same thing, is it?”

“Depends,” Jyn flashes him a sly smile, and tosses a small energy spanner into his lap. “On how good your imagination is.” Her eyes are bright with humor, and again he wonders at how vividly green they are in the red sunlight; the blue and green markings on her arms are almost as colorful. He wants, ridiculously, to trace his fingers down the lines from her shoulder to her elbow, and see if the fine hairs he can see on her arms raise in response, if her skin pebbles and shivers under his touch. She grins at him like a tooka cat scenting a mouse and asks almost sweetly, “Do you have much of an imagination, Offworlder?”

Cassian angles the spanner into the power cell in his lap, and clamps his mouth shut as he brands two new contact points on the interior of the KX scanner. “No imagination,” he says when he’s done, and hands the energy spanner back to her.

“None?” She tugs it from his hand and sets it neatly into the kit. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her half-bare legs swinging idly over the edge of the U-Wing door, and he can feel the bladed edge of her attention.

“None,” he says firmly.

The sly grin spreads across her face. She links her hands together and stretches her arms out in front of her, a move that lengthens her body and curves her spine, a stretch to match the grin. Cassian recalls an old story about the Toothy Tooka, a predator that grinned at it’s prey; he can’t remember the details, but he’s almost sure that it doesn’t have a happy ending. The cloak flung over her shoulders slips a little further, and he catches a glimpse of the unmarked skin on the back of her neck. “Not even a little?”

His fingers feel over sensitive, and a little jittery. “Not at all.”

She drops her hands back to the deck and leans back on them, her feet kicking idly once more. “Pity.”

 

* * *

 

He finishes modifying the scanner just as the red sun dips below the white cliffs on the next day, the flare of deep red and orange from the sunset turning the red streaks in the stone almost to purple. When Cassian glances up at it once, it looks alarmingly like jail bars closing in around him. After that, he keeps his eyes firmly on the scanner.  

Jyn comes back twice that day, the first time to drop a small kettle full of cooked greens on his little fold-out table (another gift from her mother, and Cassian is starting to wonder what, exactly, Jyn has told this mysterious woman about the offworlder she keeps visiting). The second time, she simply reappears around the side of his U-Wing and settles herself against the opposite end of the hatch again, silent and contemplative, one leg dangling from the opening and the other propped between them. She plays with her crystal meditatively as she watches him, and Cassian ought to find it unnerving. He doesn’t. (Quite the opposite, but he’s not about to admit that, because admitting things makes them real, and this whole mission is turning out to be something of an exercise in the unreal).

In the cockpit just over his shoulder, Kay hums in low-power mode, conserving his energy as much as possible since they don’t know how long it will be until he can turn on the ship and recharge via the power core. Over Jyn’s shoulder, the waves crash in an endless, soothing rhythm, the water deepening to dark purple and then black as the day cycle ends.

The scanner clicks in his hands, and Cassian eagerly flips it on, raising it and staring at the display.

Nothing.

He flips the frequency, scans again. Growls a curse under his breath.

“It only works when your ship is on,” Jyn says suddenly, and he looks up to find her watching him through half closed eyes, her head tilted back against the door frame, exposing her throat to him in a long, sensuous line. He blinks and shakes his head, which she takes the wrong way. “This hunter found you quickly, before, yes?” She sits up and folds her arms on top of her raised knee, her green eyes intent and focused on him. One of Dathomir’s small yellow moons is rising over her left shoulder, casting a golden glow over the water, the rocks, and Jyn herself. She seems outlined in soft light, and for a ridiculous moment Cassian wants to lean forward and trace around the curve of her face, as if he could sift the glow of her skin between his fingertips.

“But since you’ve powered down,” Jyn gestures behind him briefly, indicating the dark cockpit and Kay’s still form, “nothing. Logically, the tracker only works when there’s power on the ship. You won’t find it with that,” she nods to his lap where the scanner lies beeping futilely, “unless you turn the ship on.”

He sighs, because she’s quoting almost word for word the first thing that went through his head when he picked up the scanner a few hours ago. “If I do that,” he voices the second thing he’d realized when he started this venture, “it’s more likely the hunter will find me before I find the tracker.”

Jyn pushes herself to her feet on the beach and rests one hand lightly on her blaster handle. “Who is it?”

He hesitates, but there really is no point in hiding it. Kay’s already told her anyway. “The Empire.”

She rolls her eyes. “ _Offworlder_ ,” she scolds, and Cassian has to hide another smile at the impatience in her voice, “Who is chasing you? One hunter or a crew? Contractors or Imp soldiers? Stormtroopers or Deathtroopers?” He jumps a little to hear the bitter hatred mixed with just an edge of fear on that last word. Deathtroopers are rare out in the galaxy. Their training is long, comprehensive, and expensive as all the hells. He’s only seen them a handful of times, and always in the heart of Imperial territory. When would a Dathomiri have run across those monsters?

“It’s a VT-49,” he tells her, and stops himself from explaining further.

As he suspected, she fills in the gaps immediately. “Decimator,” she says, her eyes going slightly unfocused as if she’s searching through some internal list. “Could be up to eight people on that.”

“Or as few as one,” he agrees softly, doing his best not to interrupt the flow of her thoughts or draw her attention to how much she’s revealing to him. “I’m guessing a small crew, though.”

“Imps won’t pay a crew any more than they’d pay one,” she flicks a hand dismissively. “Unless they share a payment account, but mercs rarely do. If it’s a bounty hunter and not Imperial Navy, it’s probably only one or two hunters. Typical Imp bounties require the subject alive, all mental faculties intact. They don’t care much about broken bones or missing fingers, though.”

Cassian hums. “At least they won’t have ‘troopers.”

“They’re probably not even hired directly,” she shakes her head and her fingers trace over the outline of the crystal at her throat. “Just mercs who got a hint you might be worth something to the Imps.”

He already knows who tipped off his pursuers, even if he’s not sure who those pursuers are, precisely. That problem has already been handled, but her eyes are still unfocused. She’s still talking more to herself than to him, and Cassian has too much at stake to let that thread go unpulled. “I don’t have any bounties on my head,” he murmurs, and watches her frown deepen.

“Might have been tagged by ISB,” she taps a finger against her crystal absently – and Cassian feels a complicated swell of triumph, admiration, and profound disappointment. There are precious few people in the galaxy who know what the Imperial Security Bureau really is, even fewer who know it runs a special task force devoted entirely to tagging and tracking potential Alliance personnel, with extensive connections in the biggest bounty hunter circles. And Jyn doesn’t just know about the ISB, or the Insurgent Suppression Task Force, or common Imperial-aligned contractor ships. She knows standard Imperial procedures. Payment protocols. The required conditions for turning a captured rebel over to the government.

In retrospect, Cassian thinks tiredly, he really should have seen this coming.

Abruptly, she stills – the same perfect stillness he’s noted in her before, the stillness that makes him think of the calm center of a hurricane, the moment of weightless anticipation just before a ship jumps to lightspeed, the stillness of a mynock before it strikes - as she seems to realize what she’s just said, what he’s just drawn from her. He’s ready for it, this time, so he doesn’t flinch when she lunges across the space between them, her blade flashing from her belt to her hand too fast for him to see more than a golden streak of reflected moonlight before the point is hovering against his throat again.

At least, he thinks with a half-hearted humor, she’s not kneeling on his lungs this time. At least she doesn’t plunge the knife into his flesh, or pull her blaster, or even vanish into the deepening night. Cassian counts that as a win. Her eyes tell him that she’s considering it, though, and that’s…

He’s so damn tired.

“You’re very well informed” he says in a voice so low that it’s almost a whisper. “More than most devoted servants of the Empire.”

Jyn’s jaw flexes, her eyes are wide; her back is entirely to the moons, now, throwing all her features into shadow and leaving only her outline visible to him. The light is full on his face, however, so he knows she can probably see every line around his eyes and mouth, every nuance of his expression. He struggles to keep it blank, noncommittal.

It’s harder than he expects.

“I pay attention to the traders,” she says at last. “What of it?”

He looks pointedly to the blade, and then back at her, not even bothering to raise an eyebrow at the ridiculousness of her implication. Yes, of course, it’s all just merchant gossip, which perfectly explains why she is now threatening to kill him for hearing her repeat it.   

She grimaces. “I pay attention,” she repeats, but refuses to elaborate. Most likely, Cassian guesses, there are rebels passing through this sector who have found a welcome waystation with Jyn’s clan. Or she has some connection in the bounty hunters’ circles herself, or worst of all, she deals with the Imperial patrols that probably run through this system from time to time.

It hardly matters, either way.

“No,” he says flatly, the bitterness of his disappointment overruling his good sense for a moment. “You don’t. You watch, perhaps. You listen. But you don’t pay attention. If you _paid_ _attention_ ,” he shoves himself up to his feet, and Jyn has to dance back to prevent her blade from impaling his neck as he moves, “you would actually be out there fighting back against the Empire and it’s _deathtroopers_.” He spits the word deliberately, and feels an ugly little surge of dark acid satisfaction when she flinches. He was right about that, too, it seems. She has some history with deathtroopers.

He crowds closer, close enough that he can see her face even with her back to the moons. “If you paid attention - ”

But Jyn recovers faster than he expects, and cuts him off with a low, fierce snarl. “I would be trapped on a strange planet waiting to be caught by Imperial bounty hunters?” Her blade drops to her side, but he can see how white her knuckles have gone around the hilt. Gold glints at the hollow of her throat – her crystal has come loose again. He wants to trace his finger over the shimmer he can just barely see. He wants to grab it in his hand and yank it off her neck. He wants…he wants…

“You wouldn’t be hiding on this planet pretending none of it concerned you.”

Her eyes catch the moonlight as she steps close and grabs his jacket lapel, or perhaps it’s only her fury that makes them appear to be burning. “I have my reasons, Offworlder,” she growls, so low he can only just hear her over the crashing tide.

He barks a cold laugh, the pale cast of her fear at the mention of deathtroopers telling him all he needs to know about this woman who moves like a warrior but hides like a frightened child when it matters. When the galaxy needs a warrior like her, and has only a killer like him to fill her place. “Oh? What reasons are those? Aside from cowardice.”

Her fist tightens on his jacket, pulling him a little closer to her face, and he wonders briefly if she means to headbutt him. Instead, she bares her teeth at him and narrows her eyes. “Why are you still here, Offworlder? Why haven’t you launched back into the sky and faced your pursuers head on?”

It’s petty, and stupid, but his blood is boiling in his veins now and the bruises on his chest have turned into vices; he is gasping against the pressure of all his mistakes these last few days. The Ersos, lost. His contact network on Mandalore, burned. Even his own damn ship, compromised. Hells, he is slowly being crushed by the failures of these last few years, of this desperate war against an implacable enemy that he has bloodied himself to defeat, over and over, and yet never seems to so much as scratch it in return. “I am following protocol,” he snaps back, when he ought to walk away. “When in pursuit, I have orders to – “

“Orders,” she sneers, and Cassian finds that he is leaning forward, pressing against her fist, his own hands shaking at his sides. “All the Alliance ever speaks of is _orders._ If they ordered you to slit your throat, Offworlder, would you do it?” She gives his jacket a hard shake, rocking him slightly. “Would you? Fall nobly on your blade for the cause, _Cassian?_ ”

He leans down until he’s so close he can count the lashes around her fierce eyes. A tiny, quiet part of him wonders what he’s doing, why he is so pissed off and betrayed by this revelation that Jyn has chosen to avoid the fight that consumes his life (will probably consume it entirely, soon enough). She’s hardly the first he’s ever met who chooses to watch from the sidelines. She won’t be the last. He has no reason to be so angry with her, when his usual reaction to the willfully ignorant is a resigned irritation.

He has no reason to be so hurt, when she owes him nothing and is nothing to him, anyway.

The rest of him, however, is just too fucking furious to care about _reasons_.

“Everything dies,” he says flatly. “I want my death to _mean_ something.” He jerks backwards sharply, tearing his jacket loose from her grip. He half-turns to storm into his ship and slam the hatch closed behind him, locking out the beach, the woman, and whatever foolish impulse has him acting so irrationally emotional.

Jyn’s breath hitches, as if he’s struck her in the stomach and knocked the air from her. Cassian’s frown deepens and he pauses, thrown by her disproportionate reaction.

“Everything dies,” she whispers, and the skin on the nape of his neck tightens.

“Yes,” he says shortly, uncertain what she’s getting at, why that one thing, of all the things he’s said, should hit her so hard.

In the back of his head, he thinks, randomly, _she taught me three true things_ , and then wonders where he heard that. He digs the toes of his right foot into the sole of his right boot, letting the mild pain jolt him away from that pointless line of thought. He regains his presence of mind in time to see Jyn’s hand lift to her throat again, curling tight around the stone she wears. Cassian’s fingers twitch, and he shoves them into his jacket and wraps his right hand around the blaster tucked under his left arm. He has no intention of pulling it, but the familiarity steadies him a little.

He’s just about to move again, into the ship and out of the night, out of this…argument. Clash of personalities. Snarling exchange of surprisingly emotional insults. Whatever it is. Before he can turn his back and walk away, Jyn closes her eyes and bows her head. “I didn’t think you were real.”

And then she takes off down the beach, running swift and silent as a shadow, her knife flashing gold in her hand until she turns around the base of the cliff and the darkness enfolds her in it’s protective embrace.

Cassian stares at the empty beach, bewildered.

“Oh yes,” Kay says from the cockpit. “Definitely doomed.”

 

* * *

 

 Three hours later, he sits up in his bunk and snarls, “Tío Arej, you _son of a bantha bitch_.”

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Their prattle about modifying the droid banter is as accurate as I can make it based on my knowledge of radar parts and functionality. It’s still half techno-babble, but it’s as factual as I can make it.
> 
> Lyra will come into play as an actual character soon, these two are just hogging the spotlight.


	4. blood and feathers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  

The U-Wing’s engines whine in crescendo, the atmospheric pulsers rattling as they chew up and spit out the bits of white pebbles and beach grit that have blown into the intakes. The noise echoes around inside the cargo bay, and Cassian winces. It normally doesn’t bother him much, but he half expects the Imperial hunter to come screaming down from the sky at any second, so the noise sets his back up and has him leaning out the open hatch periodically to check. It’s a ridiculous impulse – if this stunt draws the hunter, it won’t be the _engine noise_ that gives Cassian away – but he can’t help himself.

“Twenty seconds,” Kay says in a measured tone from the cockpit behind him. Cassian kneels by the modified KX scanner and activates it, watching the screen intently. A visual overlay of the U-Wing pops up in wireframe on the screen, downloaded schematics from his flight console. A small yellow pulse flicks over the screen, scanning down the wireframe, then another, then another. “Thirty seconds,” Kay calls over the noise of the roaring engines.

Cassian glares at the screen. Come on. _Come on._

Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.

“Forty seconds.”

Pulse. Pulse. Nothing. _Come on_.

“Fifty seconds,” Kay’s voice betrays no sign of frustration or disappointment, completely neutral as he adds, “Shutting down.”

Pulse. Pulse.

The engines whine again, trailing off with a little trill that sounds as disappointed as Cassian feels. The scanner pulses one more time before the power dies – nothing.

“Shut down complete,” Kay announces as the engine noise fades entirely and the only sound left is the crashing tide and Cassian’s frustrated grunt. “Exactly sixty seconds.”

“Very precise,” Cassian mutters, feeling the weight of yet _another_ defeat piling onto his shoulders.

“Of course. Anything less would risk the bounty hunter picking up on the activated tracking device before we find the device.”

Yes, he knows. Cassian calculated out the optimal length of time the KX scanner would need to get any kind of decent reading, and then factored in Kay’s probability calculations concerning the power and range of the enemy’s tracking capabilities, and he had come to the conclusion that a dozen short bursts of power, no more than sixty seconds each, was his best chance to find the damn thing.

This is attempt number seven, and it fails as miserably as the rest. The worst of it is, he grumbles mentally, he can’t be sure if he’s not finding the tracker because his calculations are incorrect and he needs to run the scanner longer, or if the scanner itself just…isn’t working. If he takes a greater risk and runs the power longer, he _might_ find the tracker, but the odds that the hunter will pick up the renewed signal and be on his ass like a hungry gizka scenting a rat increase exponentially.

Alright. Five more bursts. Five more chances. He shakes off the creeping desperation and re-checks the duplexer. Wired appropriately. He’s been working on droids since he was old enough to close his fingers all the way, his mother, or one of his aunts or uncles, holding him gently over the wires and circuits and guiding his chubby hands. He knows what he’s doing. The scanner is as good as he can make it with these tools and resources.

It’s just…not working.

“Ready for the next run,” he calls to Kay.

He waits for the engine whine – and hears nothing. Surprised, he turns to look at Kay, and sees his friend staring out the open hatch behind Cassian’s back. He twists awkwardly on his knees to follow Kay’s optics and –

“You’re still here,” Jyn says quietly. Her posture is wary, her cloak pulled tight around her body, but her expression is an odd mix between surprise, uncertainty, and something that glimmers in her eyes like a light, faint and cautious but there. It makes his heart tighten in his chest, this small faint light that he almost recognizes.

He licks his lips, nods. She doesn’t move, doesn’t speak further, so he finds himself babbling to fill the silence. “I’m powering the ship in short bursts to run the scanner, but I can’t keep it going longer than sixty seconds, or I risk drawing the bounty hunters. Or the Scissorhands. Fists. I don’t want to accidentally fly further into their turf.”

Her face shutters in an instant, closing him out. “Oh,” is all she says, but there is a world of disappointment hidden in that single syllable. That faint light flickers out like a switch has been flipped in her eyes, and Cassian wonders why it makes him want to reach out and grab her arm, or maybe just lay his hand against her cheek, something to coax it back again.

Whatever “it” was.

“I detect no higher order life forms in the vicinity,” Kay turns back to the cockpit, his focus on the flight console. “She has not brought her clan to murder or enslave us.”

“Ah,” Cassian nods again, feeling stupid and wrong-footed. “Good.”

He expects Kay to keep going, elaborate on the ways that the intruder might yet attack them, or demand that they continue with the scans. Instead, Kay merely taps at the console, wholly absorbed in whatever has drawn his attention. Or, possibly, sensing another emotional confrontation and withdrawing from the conversation as protest. He never did like when organics engaged in their messier (and according to him, poorly designed) interpersonal programming.

The sea breeze pulls at Jyn’s dark hair, teasing a strand from her bun and throwing it across her forehead. She stands perfectly still, and in the morning light she looks…she looks…

“I’m sorry,” he says abruptly, settling back on his heels and pressing his clammy hands against his thighs. “For yesterday. What I said. It’s…it’s none of my business, how you live your life.”

Now it’s her turn to nod, solemn and almost formal. She doesn’t fidget, but he gets the impression that she wants to. The silence stretches out between them, and he’s just about to turn back to the scanner when she steps lightly forward and hops into the U-Wing, dropping into a crouch next to him. She tosses the cloak over the shoulder nearest him and thrusts her arm out almost in his face. He sees pale skin covered in blue marks, and notes with some surprise the series of even paler scars criss crossing her arm. The green marks are gone, and he sees now that they must have been specifically designed to cover the scars, the previously nonsensical pattern aligning in his memory with the evidence he can see in front of his eyes. The marks range from precise, clean lines to ragged curving tears, and her knuckles are thick with callouses and white scar tissue. A fighter’s scars.

It takes him a moment to realize that she’s holding something tight in her fist, and belatedly he raises his hand to accept it. A small metal square drops into his palm – an amplifier! Small, a bit old, definitely not intended for droid use, but he’s worked with this model before, he can boost his scanner at least a few more units and…

“Thank you,” he says, looking up and smiling, “This is - ”

Green eyes fill his vision, a faint whiff of damp earth, polished steel, and blaster oil – she is closer than he thought. Far too close. If he just leaned down a little farther, angled his head a little to the side –

“Welcome,” Jyn says, and her mouth pulls into a half smile that immediately turns sad. She pulls back, shifting to sit cross legged on the deck. Technically she hasn’t moved any farther, but the space between them seems to open up again, and Cassian’s lungs remember how to breathe.

It takes him about twenty minutes to reconfigure the scanner’s internal setup so he can slip the amplifier in. Jyn hands him the tool he needs to graft it into the system, but neither speak a word. After a couple minutes, she pulls out her knife (making a point of doing it slowly and fully within his sight so he knows that she means no aggression) and briskly runs what looks like a carbon-fiber sharpener down the edge. Every few minutes she stops and holds the blade out the open hatch and examines it with a critical eye as it catches the sunlight. The silence is thick, edged with tension – it’s in the way she hands him the tool so that their fingers do not touch, the way he watches her from the corner of his eye while taking care to look like he’s doing nothing of the kind – but underneath the caution, there is something else, something familiar. It’s that faint sense of recognition all over again, that moment when she realized he was still there, stretched out and given weight. Jyn sharpens her blade in the growing morning sun and Cassian rewires the droid scanner beside her, and if he could catch this moment and hardcode it into his memory, he would. 

“My uncle,” Cassian says as the amplifier pops to life in the scanner and starts running a setup diagnostic using the battery power in the scanner.

“Droid merchant,” she says, nodding.

It shouldn’t warm him, that she remembers. It does anyway.

“He came to Dathomir once, before I was born.”

Jyn peers down the edge of her knife one more time before tucking it with a practiced movement back into her belt. “In ancient days gone past,” she says thoughtfully.

Cassian blinks. She says it in a sing-song tone, like she’s reciting something, and there’s a glint in her eye again, the one that makes his stomach flip a little (is this what it feels like? He’s heard the stories, but never really believed he would find out for himself). He licks his lips, pushes the childish thought from his mind. “How old do you think I am?”

Her mouth twitches. “Eighty seven.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“Eighty-four,” she amends.

“I’m twenty-six,” he corrects peevishly, working to hide his own grin. “But I suppose that seems old to a young thing like you.”

She snorts. “Twenty-two.”

“A baby.”

She scowls fiercely at him, but Cassian shrugs.

“You started it.”

“Your uncle,” she prompts. “On Dathomir.”

“Tío Arej. He came here – “

“In ancient days.”

“ _A few decades ago_ , and he said he met a witch.”

Jyn laughs. It’s not like the soft chuckles or muffled giggling he’s heard her make before. It’s a bright sound, ringing like bells in his head as she leans forward and wraps her arms tight around her stomach in a poor attempt to hold in her mirth. She looks up at him with her eyes creased in amusement and her teeth flashing, and the morning light glows a rosy gold in her hair.

It takes her a solid twenty seconds to stop laughing. When she does, she leans forward and scoops up the pile of loose screws Cassian had set by his knee. She holds them out to him in a loose fist. “Did she turn him into a womp-rat?”

He can tell that she expects him to stretch out his hand and let her drop the screws into it, but the sound of her laughter lingers in his ears (and her smirk is far too self-satisfied), so instead he grabs her wrist gently with his right hand and flips her fist, pushing the fingers of his left hand through hers and plucking the screws from her suddenly loose grip. She doesn’t gasp, but there’s a moment when her body goes completely still. “She told him three true things,” Cassian tells her, a little breathless himself.

Jyn’s free hand flies up to her crystal. He watches the series of emotions that flicker across her face with fascination.  “They scared me, then,” he admits. “I was very small, and the idea that everything rots and dies, no matter what.” He laughs a little at his child self, shaking his head. “It gave me nightmares.”

“They are difficult truths,” she murmurs. “The third…”

“I can never remember the third,” he shrugs. “It’s not important. Jyn,” he studies her face, “It bothers you, doesn’t it? When I mention…” He makes a helpless gesture with his free hand, not entirely sure where he’s going with this but almost sure that it’s important somehow that he try.

She shakes her head. Cassian waits a beat, but she doesn’t respond further. Ah. Alright. He drops her hand, and she stands (a mundane way of describing how smoothly she moves, all supple muscle and rippling blue markings on her skin – Jyn doesn’t stand so much as she flows up to the balls of her feet).

“Cassian,” she says (he doesn’t shiver, but there’s a moment when his body goes completely still), “Do you believe in the Force?”

He shifts back on his heels and cranes his neck to look up at her. An impolite question out in the rest of the galaxy – and depending on the attitude of the local Imperials, sometimes a dangerous one. He has the feeling that she knows that, too, judging by the way her face draws tight and her weight shifts to her toes as if she’s about to bolt out the door.

He considers lying, then decides that it’s far too late. “I’m not sure,” he confesses.

His own question hangs in the air between them – _does it matter?_

“My mother told me that the Force speaks to us,” Jyn tells him, “Through memories, and stories, and - ” her hand makes an abortive move toward her throat, but she catches it and tucks her arms back under her cloak. “Dreams.” She takes a step toward the open hatch.

Cassian licks his lips. “I’m going to try another scan of the ship,” he says quietly. “It might draw my enemies.”

Slowly, her shoulders relax, and then she sinks back into a cross-legged pose on the deck next to him in one smooth movement. He understands – enemies are something Jyn knows how to handle. Enemies can be stabbed, or shot, or (his mouth twitches up at the memory) dropped on from above. Enemies were much easier to deal with than…well, _him,_ Cassian supposes.

But these aren’t her enemies, and so he feels obligated to warn her. “It would be safer for you if you left.”

She gives him a flat look. “If you draw the Scissorfists, you’ll need backup.”

“It might be the bounty hunter instead.”

“Even better.” She pulls her blaster free and settles it in her lap. “It’s been awhile since I’ve killed an Imperial.”

“Has it?” He turns away, pulls the scanner closer, and raps his knuckles on the deck. “Kay, start the engines in thirty seconds.”

“Run time can safely be extended to ninety seconds, given the new amplifier,” Kay answers immediately.

“Good.”

“Good,” Jyn echoes, sounding more resigned than pleased. The notion that she might not want him to have an excuse to leave lightens the weight of failure on his shoulders. Cassian winks at her (or as close as he can; he never really got the hang of one-eye-at-a-time), and hurriedly focuses on the scanner before he can do something stupid like blush at her answering grin.

“Attempt number eight,” Kay announces, and the whine of the U-Wing engines ricochets in the cargo hold, ending any further speech.

 

* * *

 

Two hours and five more failed attempts at scanning later, Cassian gives up with as much grace as he can muster. Jyn pats his shoulder in sympathy as she slips out to the beach.

 

* * *

 

That night he dreams of his father.

At least he thinks it’s his father – the man never turns to face him. Same lean build that Cassian remembers, same dark hair, but there’s something about him that seems off. His father is standing on a white beach, the red ocean crashing around his ankles. Cassian eyes the water with deep suspicion. The ocean looks wrong, too, moving slow and viscous around his father’s feet.

“Three true things,” his father says, except something is odd about his voice too. It doesn’t quite match Cassian’s memory, and yet it sounds so familiar anyway. His father takes a step farther into the red water, and keeps speaking. “Everything rots,” he says.

“Don’t,” Cassian calls, watching the red creep higher on his father’s legs. “Don’t go out there.”

(His voice is also wrong, too high, with the wrong accent. A Core world’s accent.)

“Everything dies,” his father calls back, still moving slowly out into the red ocean. Cassian feels desperation clawing in his chest like a trapped animal, _don’t go, don’t go, don’t leave!_

Cassian opens his mouth, but his voice is gone altogether now, and the crystal digs into his fingers as he clutches it tight against his chest.

Another step, and the man that looks like his father pauses, turns slightly back towards the shore. He’s up to his waist in red now, and it breaks upon Cassian with cold horror that the ocean isn’t water at all. _Don’t,_ he wants to scream, _don’t go out there, you’ll be lost!_

“The third true thing,” his father says over his shoulder – did his father have a scruffy beard? He can’t remember his father having a beard – “I can never remember the third thing.”

 _I forget that one too,_ he wants to say, _I forget it all the time._

_Don’t go out there._

_Please._

 

* * *

 

“You were talking in your sleep,” Kay looms over the fold-out bunk, optics glowing eerily in the dim light of pre-dawn. “This is the first recorded incident of you doing so since you were sixteen standard years old.”

Cassian sits up and rubs at his stiff neck, ignoring the clammy feel of his skin. “It’s nothing. Just a dream.”

“I strongly recommend you report to Medical and resume the treatment from that time period,” Kay says sternly. “Talking in your sleep increases your chances of capture or death on missions by thirty-five percent.”

“It was just one dream,” Cassian shakes his head and swings his legs over the side of the bunk.

Kay whirs disapprovingly, but leaves it alone, marching back to the cockpit, taking care to step around the modified scanner. Cassian stretches until his spine pops, and then glares blurrily at the purple ocean still crashing steadily directly in front of him, out the open hatch. For a brief moment, his mind overlays a deep, unpleasant red over the water, and he shudders and looks away.

“Kay,” Cassian asks softly. “What was I saying?”

His friend turns to look back at him from the co-pilot seat. “You said, ‘I thought you weren’t real.’”

 

* * *

 

He’s still puzzling over the dream, over the man who looked like his father but wasn’t, over his own strange reaction to that man’s imminent death (if that’s what was happening, although Cassian can’t imagine a man walking into an ocean of blood could end in a _good_ way), when the gentle quiet of the beach is suddenly shattered by a bone-shaking screech.

Cassian lunges toward the open hatch, the scanner slamming down with a clang back to the deck as he draws his blaster and drops into a firing position partially shielded by the wall. Across from him, Kay rises from the co-pilot seat, his power connectors snapping as he jerks himself free, and strides to the opposite side of the hatch. He doesn’t kneel, he simply stands just behind the bulkhead and peers through the hatch. His optics glow blue, then back to white. “Life form detected,” he announces. “Warm-blooded. Significant size.”

Cassian keeps his blaster up, but he drops one hand to his belt to pull out his rifle casing and extending barrel. The things that his two-meter tall, hundred-kilo metal friend called “significant” tended to be what Cassian called “terrifyingly huge.” He will probably need his blaster in the rifle configuration for this one. “Range?”

“Standby,” Kay whirs.

A shadow falls over the U-Wing, turning the white and red pebbles grey and bloody-looking for a moment, and then vanishes. Something heavy strokes through the air, _whumf, whumf, whumf,_ and Cassian blinks against the sand thrown up in his eyes in the wake of something passing just overhead.

“It’s close,” Kay says when the shadow passes toward the south and the sand settles.

Another horrific screech cuts off Cassian’s irritated answer (probably for the best), and then the shadow passes over the U-Wing again, more sand kicking up, the sound of heavy wings beating at the air making his ears pop under the pressure. Cassian leans out of the hatch to peer upward, and catches a glimpse of…

_La madre que me parió._

It looks from this angle like a huge black cat, with black claws and massive black wings that fade into dark purple feathers, and then go light grey along the edges. A long tail stretches behind it, flat and broad at the base, narrowing to whip-like thinness that ends in what might be a sharp bone tip. The creature banks in the sky over the cliffs and screeches again, and he gets a good look at the head. For a moment, he almost thinks someone forced a dark grey helmet onto some kind of raptor – but then the creature opens a curved beak and screeches again, and he realizes the 'helmet' is bone, grown hard and exposed over the cranial ridge of the creature’s head. The cranial bone ridge splits at the back of the beast’s head and curves down under it’s beak, forming two stubby but wicked horns. He sees a flash of gold eyes, and then the beast turns back toward him, wings outstretched, body outlined by the sun. Cassian marvels at the truly magnificent and utterly savage image it presents.

Then sanity asserts itself and he lunges back inside, smashing his fist into the button to close the hatch. The metal door rumbles and whines, feeling painfully slow as the beast dives, gleaming black claws extended.

Halfway closed.

The beast screeches, sand blooming up from the beach as it skims along the rocks, aimed for the open hatch, for Cassian’s unprotected flesh.

Two thirds closed.

Cassian’s vision fills with black metal, Kay’s hard shoulder shoving him backwards as the droid moves between him and the incoming feathery death.

 _Clang!_ The hatch shuts and hisses for a second, sealing itself, and then the U-Wing rocks wildly as several kilos of enraged cat-bird smash into the door.

“For the record,” Kay says calmly as Cassian wraps his hand around the crash netting on the bulkhead and tells himself to breathe, “I would like it noted that this situation would have been resolved significantly faster if I had a blaster.”

The U-Wing rocks again. The sound of wicked claws grating against metal moves from the door, up over the top of the ship, and then something pounds on the far bullhead opposite the hatch. The cat-bird creature checking for other openings, he assumes. It sounds like thunder booming against the metal.

“I’m not sure about that,” Cassian says.

They stand silent for almost five more minutes, listening to the creature poke and prod at the U-Wing, growling and screeching periodically. Cassian considers lifting off, but he has a feeling the creature would only follow them into the air, and then he would have a whole series of new problems.

Fortunately, the creature seems to get bored or frustrated with them eventually, and the U-Wings rocks one last time as it pushes off the top of the ship and launches into the sky. An irate screech rings against the hull ( _and the same to you, furrball_ , Cassian thinks grimly), and then the heavy sound of wings fades away.

“Life form in the vicinity,” Kay says.

“Still?” Cassian frowns. He could have sworn he heard it fly away to the east. Did it circle back? Or just go high enough that he can’t hear it, and is now circling, waiting to dive?

“Yes,” Kay nods, and then to Cassian’s surprise clumps away to sit at the cockpit. “You should open the hatch. She is moving fast and may be in need of assistance.”

Cassian stares at him. Why the many hells would the bird…cat…thing need _assistance?_ Assistance eating the tasty Human? Should Cassian perhaps slather the meatiest parts of himself in spices to better help the beast pick the choicest bits?

“She appears to be alone again,” Kay continues, totally oblivious of the incredulous stare centered on his back. “I have updated my former predictions. I now calculate the probability that you will go native and settle on Dathomir to be the _most_ likely scenario, rather than the second most.”

It takes a moment for Cassian to make that connection, and then he wheels and slaps the hatch open again. It grinds open a touch slower than it closed, the left rail bent out of shape from the impact of the creature. It’s only halfway open when Jyn rushes around the corner of the U-Wing and skids to a stop in the pebbles before him.

Her face is flushed, her chest heaving, and her eyes are so bright and alive that for a moment Cassian’s skin burns as she looks at him, seared by her fire.

She looks from him to the U-Wing, and Cassian leans out to check – yes, there are definitely some deep, unpleasant gashes along the top of the ship, and a few new dents to add to the collection. Nothing structural threatening, thankfully, nor anything that will make it too dangerous to leave atmo when it’s time. Cassian blows out a breath and turns to Jyn, and finds her _beaming._

“He was here!” She half-shouts at him. And then she flies forward, reaches up and grabs his wrist, tugging him down to the beach. “Come on!”

Somehow he finds himself stumbling, and then running awkwardly, looking back over his shoulder in bewilderment at the U-Wing. Kay appears in the now-open hatch, his glowing optics fixed on them, and then, to Cassian’s further shock, his friend turns and walks calmly back into the ship. As if Jyn dragging Cassian off into the woods in the wake of a monster is nothing troubling whatsoever.

Jyn’s hand slides from his wrist to his hand, her fingers locking around his, making it easier for him to match his strides to hers. She flashes him another delighted smile as he pulls even with her, “We’re close!” she shouts, and turns her eager face forward again, guiding him around the base of the white cliffs and into the shadows of the nearby forest.

Cassian gives up, and runs.

She weaves through a grove of slender red and orange trees, the trunks all different shades of brown and grey. Cassian thinks he catches a glimpse of purple flowers growing up the side of one small tree, a flash of blue moss creeping over another. He’s too busy trying to keep up with Jyn to really take any of it in, although he’s careful to map out the landmarks where he can. If she leaves him out here, he will be in a great deal of trouble.

Probably should have thought of that before he ran off into the woods with her.

Soon enough, she slows as the trunks thicken and begin to space out, and they drop to a walk when the fire-red bushes around them begin to surge up above Jyn’s head. There are trails that wind through the bushes, narrow enough that Jyn slips out ahead of him, and Cassian follows close behind, working hard not to notice that she dropped his hand. Jyn leans forward slightly as she walks, her eyes searching through the brush around them, her steps light, her body poised to dart ahead the moment she finds her prey. Cassian pads as carefully as he can in her wake. He’s not well acquainted with the forest, any forest, but he did have to take several weeks worth of survival and stealth training in a rural environment, and he knows how to not crash through the trees like a raging rancor, at least.

But after several minutes of quietly flitting through the bushes, his curiosity and confusion get the better of him.

“Jyn,” he murmurs, and reaches out to tap her shoulder. To his mild surprise, she turns immediately, her mouth still canted up into the ghost of her former grin, and the intensity of her gaze focuses suddenly on him. She blinks, and then her eyebrows creep up, her chin tilts in challenge, and he realizes that he’s been staring. He scrubs a hand over his face and then asks quietly, “What are we doing?”

She frowns, as if this is a strange question she wasn’t expecting. “Hunting,” she answers in the same low tone.

“Hunting _what?_ ”

“ _Stenorel,”_ Jyn says, as if it should be obvious. At his blank stare, she rolls her eyes, grabs his hand again, and tugs him forward. “The great beast of shadow and bone,” she explains over her shoulder. “ _Stenorel_. It’s an invading male. I’ve been tracking it for days, but he made a big kill when he first got here. Probably been sleeping it off in some den.”

“Until it got hungry again,” Cassian murmurs, shuddering at the memory of those enormous claws.

Jyn hums agreement, but says no more, leading him through the thin paths until the fire bushes thin and then end. Up ahead, through the heavy trees, Cassian can just make out what looks like a wide open clearing and something…something…pink. Not a gentle pinkish color, either, but a brilliant, neon, unforgiving and unrepentant _pink_ , covering the ground of the clearing in a neat, defined oval shape. Wildflowers, perhaps?

Jyn tugs him to the edge of the clearing, kneeling behind a line of red and orange scrub brush. Cassian crouches beside her, scanning the open sky over the clearing before peering out at the pink – lake, he startles. It’s a lake, little ripples trailing through the improbable water behind tiny orange and pink birds that paddle and splash in the shallows. Cassian squeezes his eyes hard, wonders if the reddish light of Dathomir’s sun has finally gotten to him, or perhaps it reflecting oddly through the water.

“Halophile algae,” Jyn breathes into his ear, and Cassian’s eyes fly open. She’s balancing delicately on the balls of her feet next to him, one hand hovering over his shoulder as if she had reached to steady herself on him and stopped herself at the last moment. Her mouth is perilously close to his ear. He can feel her breath whispering against his cheek, slipping down the back of his neck and through his hair. He clenches his right fist, the one opposite of her, and presses it hard into the dirt. The scratch of dirt and branches against his knuckles grounds him, lets him keep his face neutral and his breathing steady.

Once he’s certain he’s under control, he turns to look at her, an expression of mild interest on his face. “Lots of salt in there,” she nods to the lake. “Halophile algae eats the salt and…” She flicks a finger toward the clearing.

“Pink,” he finishes.

“Pink.” She smirks at him, and he probably could stop the answering smile that tugs on the corner of his mouth, but he doesn’t much see the point.

“So what about the…stan-i-rail?”

Jyn smothers a laugh. “ _Stenorel_ ,” she corrects. “He’s here, somewhere.” She pulls her knife in one hand, and unlocks a heavy black stick from a sheath on her thigh. He’d barely noticed it before, mostly hidden by her cloak. The stick _clicks_ , extends, and Cassian almost rolls his eyes at himself for once again underestimating her, because that’s a Hadlriss Defense Truncheon, combat grade. High end, about three or four years old if he’s got a correct guess of the model, a bit worn around the handle but otherwise in excellent shape. The kind of weapon that successful mercenaries liked to use on no-kill contracts. It was also popular with a certain sect of former-Alliance rebels in the Japrael sector.

Cassian logs that particular bit of information away, but there’s no time to really process it, because Jyn is already moving, slipping like a wraith through the brush around the edge of the clearing.

“Jyn,” Cassian calls after her, as softly as he can. She pauses and looks back at him, waiting. He opens his mouth, closes it again, thinks briefly of wide dark wings, and fierce golden eyes. “Do we have to kill it?”

She considers him for a moment, and then suddenly, she is kneeling in front of him, her face once again close to his. “There’s a female _stenorel_ that way,” she points to the north. “They breed once every five years, and she just had her first litter.” Jyn holds up three fingers, which Cassian takes to mean _three cubs_. “ _Stenorelin_ pairs stay together all their lives. Males are smaller than females, but more territorial, more violent. The female up there hasn’t been able to leave her nest for days, because if she does, this invader male will kill her mate and then her cubs. She’ll go into season again, he’ll be the only male around, and she’ll raise his cubs instead. He's waiting for her to get too hungry to stay with her nest, and then he'll strike while she hunts. If she waits too long, he'll kill all the big game and she, her mate, and her cubs will starve to death anyway.”

Jyn frowns suddenly, and looks down at the ground between them. “I know they’re animals,” she says a little defensively, as if she expects Cassian to argue with her, or scold her for interfering. “They behave as the Force wills.” This part sounds almost rote, as if she’s reciting an old childhood lesson. “But…”

“You want to protect her family,” Cassian says.

She shrugs, her head still bent, so close that a stray breeze picks up a strand of her hair and flutters it against his cheek.

He sighs, notes with passing interest that she shudders in response to his breath ghosting over her, and then he holds out his hand. “So, what’s the plan?”

“You can’t shoot it unless you get it through the eye,” Jyn says immediately, shifting from defensive to brisk in a blink.

“Four targets, then,” Cassian reasons, curling his fingers through hers and letting her tow him around the clearing again.

“Four impossibly small, well guarded, constantly moving targets,” Jyn corrects. “And while you’re trying to hit those, he will claw your liver out and wear it as a fetching hat.”

“At least he has good taste.” Jyn levels him with a flat stare, but Cassian squeezes her hand lightly. “No, no, it’s true. I have a very attractive liver.”

She shakes her head, but when she turns to scan out over the lake, he catches a glimpse of a smile on her face again.

None of this is helping him get off Dathomir and back to the Alliance, he reminds himself. It’s certainly not helping him track down the scientist Erso, or his missing family. If the Empire has a new super weapon, hunting a cat-bird in the wilds of an Outer Rim planet isn’t going to stop it.

On the other hand, he’s spent every waking minute on this planet trying increasingly desperate plans to find the tracker and slip away, and so far, he’s gotten no where. Even his patience drills haven’t helped his mind suddenly conceive of a brilliant idea that will fix all his immediate problems. Perhaps a real distraction will jar something loose in his head, or just give Kay enough time to come up with something on his own.

Jyn stills in front of him so abruptly that if he hadn’t been paying such close attention to her movements (in order to follow in her footsteps and minimize noise, of course), he might have run right into her. As it is, he stops just short of his chest bumping into her back, and holds himself absolutely still as she peers over the brush and into the clearing.

Then she spins gracefully on her toes to face him, letting go of his hand only so she can reach up and press her fingers against his jawline.

Cassian’s heart skips, but Jyn presses harder, forcing his head to turn, and then she presses her thumb into the underside of his jaw, tilting his chin up. Cassian realizes what she’s doing and relaxes, letting her direct his head until he’s looking up and right. There’s a break in the red leaves of the trees, and through the break he catches a flash of black and purple. The creature, the male _stenorel_. It’s perched on a particularly large tree, half-hidden by the red foliage.  His back is to them, the black, bone-tipped tail lashing idly as he stares at something down in the pink lake.

Jyn taps his ear lightly and shakes her head. Cassian nods. The creature has good sense of hearing, good to know. But does it have a good sense of smell? He lifts his hand and taps her nose, raising his eyebrows. Jyn shrugs. He frowns at her, _not helpful_.

She smirks at his frown, and then turns serious again, pointing to the south, around the far end, and lifts her truncheon meaningfully. Cassian shakes his head, not clear on what she’s saying. Jyn bites her lip thoughtfully (she’s much too close, he really ought to step away. If they aren’t going to speak, then there’s no need to stand like this). She pokes him in the chest, lowers her hand deliberately, _you stay here, hunker down_. Then she points south again, and lifts the truncheon.

Inanely, he thinks, _don't go out there,_ but that makes so little sense that he banishes it from his mind and focuses on the task at hand.

Cassian shakes his head. If her plan is _you wait here while I go hit the big monster with my stick_ , he is definitely not on board. Jyn rolls her eyes at him and taps her knife with her free hand, as if he should be mollified because one of the sticks she meant to jab into the colossal beast was _pointy_. Cassian shakes his head again. He points at himself, then north, and then mimes shooting upward. He points at her, south, then mimes shooting again. They can bracket the creature until one of them gets a good shot in.

Now she shakes her head, makes a series of urgent gestures. As far as he can tell, she wants him to hide while she…gets a bigger stick? A spear? He remains unconvinced - a thrown spear can’t be better than a blaster shot, and he doesn’t see how stabbing the creature with a slightly _longer_ stick will be any better than a blunt truncheon or a dagger. But she’s not thrilled with his crossfire and distraction plan, at one point reaching up to grab his jaw again between her hands and force him to look off south. He rolls his eyes because yes, he gets it, she wants him to stay behind while she gets mauled by a giant cat-bird covered in bone armor, but no matter how heatedly she flaps her hands around, _that’s not happening._

Jyn’s jaw sets; she shuffles back slightly as if about to turn and run off and do it her way (it isn’t until she’s put some space between them that he realizes how little there was to begin with). Cassian snaps his hand out and yanks the dagger from her sheath, flipping the blade in his hand and stepping smoothly out of her reach all at once. He has a moment to savor the stunned look on her face before her eyes narrow and she stalks menacingly towards him. He steps back again, keeping one eye over her shoulder at the _stenorel,_ the other on the way her bare calves tense and her chin drops. She’s going to pounce on him in a second, and while he’s no slouch in defensive hand to hand, he’s already seen ample evidence that she’s better. There’s only one thing to do.

Cassian draws his blaster with his free hand, careful to make sure the barrel never points anywhere near her direction, and fires it into the air.

Jyn’s face turns stunned again, and then furious, but there’s a hint of admiration flashing underneath it – or at least, Force have mercy on him, he _hopes_ that’s what it is. Either way, there’s no time for either of them to dwell on what he’s just done, because the powerful screech of the _stenorel_ rips through the air the second the blaster fire fades. Jyn meets Cassian’s eyes and he sees her set aside her emotions, her face turning brisk and professional. She nods at him, and he tosses the knife back at her.

He doesn’t wait around to see her snatch it neatly from the air (it’s enough that he knows she will); Cassian turns on his heel and bolts out into the clearing, running along the edge of the pink lake towards the north side. He hears the heavy drumming of wings beating the air, feels the chill of the shadow on the back of his neck, but he doesn’t stop. Instead, he fires wildly over his shoulder, basing the shot entirely on where his instincts aim, and _runs._

Behind him, another blaster shot, two, moving further away around the south side. The _stenorel_ screams in pain and anger, and Cassian takes advantage of the creature’s distraction to dive back into the trees, throwing himself under a huge red bush. The thing may have good hearing, but it can’t see him through the near-opaque foliage. It has two choices, land and stalk him on the ground, or turn and face the steady stream of blaster shots burning tiny holes in it’s black flanks.

He holds his breath.

The _stenorel_ turns midair, and wings south, back along the shoreline. The blaster shots cut off, and Cassian sucks in a breath to his aching lungs and rolls back out of the brush. The creature is several meters away and opening, screeching as it narrows in on the small cloaked figure fleeing along the shoreline. Cassian sprints a few steps closer, taking care to stop near another patch of dense underbrush, and aims.

His first shot clips it on the right rear leg. The shot barely seems to dent the creature, although he can see some of the thick feathers burning slightly from the heat. He’s not surprised at the minimal damage, and honestly, he just needed the damn thing to turn around. It obliges, spinning in mid air just as Jyn vanishes into the trees. Once again, the _stenorel_ makes the decision to pursue the biggest, loudest, most threatening thing it sees. At the moment, that’s Cassian.

He waits until the beast is fully facing him, it’s massive wings lifting it higher in the air, probably in prep for a dive (and unfortunately, turning the golden eyes away from him, out of targeting angle). He fires two more shots into the underbelly, another directly in it’s chest where a cat’s heart should be. Either the feathers and hide are too thick, or the heart is somewhere else in this creature, because the beast screams and falters slightly in the air but otherwise keeps climbing. One more shot to the chest, just in case, and then Cassian dashes for the cover of the forest just as the beast hits the peak of it’s climb and starts to dive back down, black claws extended, jagged beak eager to tear at his fragile flesh.

The air hisses just over his shoulder blades as he skids in the dirt under the thick brush, the claws only centimeters from his skin. Another piercing shriek, almost loud enough to drown out the whine of blaster fire coming from the south. It wheels away toward Jyn, the smell of burnt feathers and blood rushes down to Cassian on the downdraft of the creature’s wings. Cassian waits for the branches of his cover to stop wildly flailing in the draft, waits for the screeching to get several meters south, the blaster fire cutting off abruptly as Jyn turns to run, and then he rolls back out.

The beast is twenty meters or so away, it’s wings ragged and its sides bloody. It has to be getting tired, too, it’s bank turns getting wider and slower as it chases them back and forth. Cassian’s a little surprised it hasn’t landed and tried to attack them on the ground, but then, it does seem like a primarily airborne predator. Perhaps it’s never been bedeviled like this before, set on both sides by small fleshy creatures that sting from a distance and vanish when it swoops. 

He clusters four shots in a tight pattern on the beast’s left side, right in the ribs. The creature dips lower in the sky, but turns back to him. The beach to the south is empty, not even a rustle of the bushes or a flicker through the trees. Cassian stands his ground for another two shots, both aimed at the exposed belly of the creature, who shudders but still climbs, ready to swoop down and tear him to pieces.

It crests, dives, and those giant black claws stretch out toward his eyes. Cassian dives back into the woods, rolls again, tucks himself under the thick foliage. Another few turns of this, he thinks. Maybe ten, fifteen more minutes. When it gets on the ground and he can get a good angle on the head, maybe he can get it in the eye after all. If nothing else, they can bleed it out until it dies. That thought makes him uncomfortable – it’s not a clean death, nor a painless one, but if Jyn says the beast needs to die, well…

Heavy wings beat the brush, the screech is painfully close to his ear, and he catches a glimpse of black feathers and furious golden eyes through the small gaps in the brush. Jyn should start shooting any second now, and draw the creature off before it –

\- smashes one clawed forearm through the branches and rakes his shoulder. Cassian shouts in surprise and pain, fire exploding in four thin lines on his skin. Adrenaline kicks in, terror mixed with pain, and he rolls again, further into the brush. The beast screams in fury, rises up a few meters and then hurls it’s big body at the screen of branches, which creaks ominously, several of the smaller ones snapping under the onslaught. No blaster fire distracts it, and Cassian is nearing the far edge of the line of red bushes. If he rolls again, he will be exposed to the beast among the relatively open trees.  

It screams, gets another forearm into the small space where he’s cowering, and Cassian flattens into the ground as well as he can to avoid a blow that would have torn his stomach open.

She left him. She’s run off and left him to be killed by this thing, and the realization burns more than the cuts in his skin, a horrible nausea twisting his guts into knots. His eyes sting a little, his jaw is clenched so tight it hurts, and he’s seconds from being ripped to pieces by a giant monstrous cat-bird and she _left him_.

The _stenorel_ rises up a few meters into the air again, screaming as it eyes the weakened patch in the brush-cover directly above him, and Cassian knows in his pounding heart that this is it, one more body slam and the beast will be through. He grips his blaster and prepares to at least go out firing, but if over a dozen shots haven’t killed it yet, one more from close range isn’t likely to do it. He can’t even raise his arm all the way up under here, can’t aim for the eyes. All he can really do is lie here and wait to die. In a way, torn apart by a wild beast seems completely random and yet, perhaps, oddly fitting. He’s sure more than one sentient has wished this fate on him. Some detached, quiet part of his brain runs through a catalogue of all the people he’s hurt or left widowed, orphaned, devastated in the wake of his actions, and idly wonders which of them would be most pleased to learn of his dismemberment. He registers the odd humming sound almost automatically, the rest of him consumed with anger and regret and a terrible, heavy longing.

The _stenorel_ dives.

A brilliant green bolt flashes, streaking from the earth to the sky like lightening, and strikes the _stenorel_ through the wing.

The impact sends it tumbling through the air, and it crashes to the earth a few meters from Cassian, flailing madly in a cloud of dirt and pebbles. It beats its legs and wings against the ground in pain and _screams._ Cassian gapes through the broken bushes, because the green light is still glowing, a long, thin shaft embedded deep in the _stenorel’s_ wing. It manages to scrabble to it’s clawed feet, the broken wing hanging at an unnatural angle, and he finally gets a clear look at it.

A carved bone handle at the top, a thin body of some kind of polished stone or metal, and at the sharp end, a glowing green light that he can just barely identify as a humming crystal of some kind. A spear that burns with an unfamiliar light.

His heart leaps in his chest, his nausea vanishes and his stomach flips for a completely different reason.

A _spear._

The beast staggers and turns to the south.

He catches the barest glimpse of someone running along the southern shoreline, much closer than he expects, and then the beast roars and bounds forward, dragging it’s bad wing but still moving terrifyingly fast. The figure angles back towards the trees, but in a split second Cassian can see that she won’t make it before the stenorel reaches her. It fell too close, and recovered too quickly.

He has five shots left in this blaster.

Cassian takes a deep breath, adjusts his aim, and rolls out of the brush. His first shot burns another hole in the beast’s good wing. It doesn’t stop, or slow, or turn back to him.

Second shot, glancing hit to the back right foot. It stumbles, catches itself, and turns to look back at him. He sees the wicked beak open, hears that chilling scream again. Over it’s shoulder, Jyn sprints for the trees, her back to them both.

Third shot, he aims for the head but the beast throws up it’s good wing and takes another hit to the singed feathers there.

Fourth shot (two left, make them count), direct hit to the wing again. The wing drops, the creature leaps toward him, mad golden eyes locked on him. Jyn stops short of the tree line, whirls around, and even from this distance, he can see the brilliant green of her eyes.

The stenorel coils it’s great body and gives a powerful leap up – it’s beautiful, even with it’s dragging wing and bloody sides, still graceful in its movements, magnificent in its fury – and Cassian brings up his blaster, aims his last shot, and fires.

The stenorel’s shadow engulfs him, his vision fills with claws and feathers and blood, and he throws up his arms instinctively but there’s nowhere to run and nothing to shield himself from the coming assault.

Distantly, he imagines he hears someone calling his name.

The impact sweeps him off his feet and throws him back, flying, weightless, then falling. He grunts as his spine smacks hard against the ground and all the air whooshes from his lungs. Something wet sprays his face, salty and warm. Weight crushes down on his lower body, and the lines of fire on his shoulder burn afresh. Cassian curls into as much of a ball as he can, his eyes squeezed shut.

And then he opens them.

The _stenorel_ lies next to him, one great clawed leg thrown awkwardly over his legs and stomach, the curved black claws resting against his chest. Up close he can see that they are each almost as long as his hand, and four of the five are spattered with red. Ah. His blood. Right.

He’s not dead.

Something wet pools around Cassian’s right arm and leg, and for a moment he thinks it’s blood (an ocean of red surging around his ankles, his knees, swallowing him up, _don't go out there!_ ) but he turns his stiff neck to the side and sees pink. Pink? Ah. Pink. The creature knocked him to the edge of the lake. The curve of the beast’s side dominates his view to the left, and the broken wing drapes over him to the right. The pink water is seeping into the ragged feathers, turning them scraggly and sodden, destroying the purple sheen. His world is a pile of bloody, burned feathers and the unpleasant thought that if the stenorel’s only stunned and not dead, that if it flexes the clawed foot on his chest, he will be shredded within seconds.

He can’t feel a heartbeat in the barrel chest of the beast against his leg, but he decides not to wait around, just in case. It hurts to move, his chest feels a bit like it’s about to cave in, but he manages to shove the forearm off his chest down toward his thighs. His legs still won’t move, but he laboriously pushes himself into a sitting position, and braces his hands against the body to try and create a little space to pull his legs out.

The creature’s wing jerks, and Cassian’s hand flies to his holster, empty, shit! Of course he dropped it when –

The wing twists and folds backwards, a move that he’s never seen any bird make before, and then he sees the white-knuckled fingers gripping the feathers. Relief and uncertainty both thread through his spine, and some of the tension in his aching muscles abruptly slackens. She’s alive. She made it.

She came back.

“Cassian!” Jyn shouts, and with a sharp crack, the wing breaks and folds back in her hands. She coils and leaps over the crumpled obstacle – for a flicker of an instant she seems to float, her cloak flaring out and her crystal flashing in the sunlight, graceful and magnificent – and lands heavily next to him, dropping to her knees, her hands outstretched towards his shoulder.

Cassian gives her a faint smile and lets her tug at his torn jacket and shirt. “Nice spear,” he says, hiding his dismay when he hears the quiver in his words. In the broken wing, he can see that the green glow has vanished, along with the odd hum, leaving only a fragile-looking polished stone spear with a crystal tip puncturing the wing near the base.

Jyn leans close and glowers at his shoulder. From this close, he can see how pale she is under the red exertion in her cheeks. Her lips are pressed into a tight, tense line and her shoulders are rigid as she prods gently at his bloody skin. “Nice shot,” she says quietly, and neither acknowledge the rough note of fear in her voice.  

Cassian doesn’t bother to look right, doesn’t try to see the beast’s head. No need; he saw the red burst from the _stenorel_ ’s golden eye when his shot burned through it.

“I thought you left me,” he blurts out, and then clamps his teeth together.

Jyn’s hands freeze on his shoulder, and for a brief, terrible second, her face…crumples. Her eyes close, her mouth pinches down at the corners… it’s an expression of profound pain, and it hits Cassian in the gut like a sucker punch. She clears her face almost instantly, an expression as neutral as any he’s ever worn smoothing her features, but it’s too late. He’s seen it.

Someone, possibly many someones, have left Jyn behind before.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“Me too,” she whispers.

She stands up abruptly, the pink water sloshing around her feet as she goes. Cassian grimaces at his legs, where his trousers and shirt tail are getting thoroughly soaked. He’s a little more concerned with the enormous dead monster sprawled across him of course, but the salty pink water isn’t improving his mood (or his wardrobe) much, either.

Jyn crouches, braces her shoulder on the beast, and glances back at him.

Cassian sighs. “Ready,” he answers her question, and reaches out with his good arm to shove at the feathery corpse.

The beast slides off him with less strain than he expects, and to his surprise, floats a little in the shallow water. The salt content of this lake must be astronomical. Or the creature is lighter than it looks – bird bones are supposed to be hollow, right? He almost regrets the hole in his education, years learning to survive in urban environments and under totalitarian regimes never left him much time for ornithology or…well, anything else, really.

“Broken?” Jyn prods his left shin with her boot.

“If I say yes, will you stop kicking it?” Cassian asks dryly.

She rolls her eyes and thrusts a hand in his face, which he takes with only marginal hesitation. Her skin is calloused and warm against his, and he neatly excises any thoughts of how comforting it is to have her fingers clasped around his again. Those thoughts are dangerous, and at the moment, utterly without purpose. The second he can, he’s leaving this planet, and likely never returning.

And Jyn isn’t involved in the war.

His shoulder burns again, a new spike of pain, and he hisses as he recognizes the dripping sensation of liquid down his chest. Some of the pink water must have saturated the back of his jacket, and when he stood up, some of it dripped forward and over his open cuts. He grabs at the material, trying to pull it from his skin.

“Here,” Jyn steps forward and tugs off his jacket, throwing it over her shoulder and tearing the fabric of his shirt away at the shoulder. Cassian helps her rip the sleeve and part of the shirt itself off, because it’s ruined anyway and the burning of the salt is starting to really _hurt._ He clamps his jaw shut against the stream of filthy curses he really wants to snarl, and concentrates on breathing.

Jyn tugs on his wrist. “Come on.”

“What about…” he jerks his chin towards the dead creature.

“I’ll come back,” Jyn shrugs. She darts forward on light feet and pulls the spear free, spinning it to flick the gore from the shaft and tucking it into a loose strap hanging from her shoulder with one smooth movement. “It’ll keep for a few hours. Come on.”

He lets her lead him away from the lake, southward. “That spear,” he starts. “Where…?”

“Cache, towards the cliff,” she points over the tree line. “Not far. Ran and got it. That’s why I wanted you to wait,” she adds, a touch peevishly.

Cassian sighs. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I should have taken your expertise into account. I put you at risk, and injured myself for no reason.” He pauses, not sure how to explain the mix of fear and exasperation and stubborn pride that had made him so sure she was trying to protect him at her own risk, his stupid concern that she was underestimating him to her own detriment.

“I didn’t trust you enough, either,” she says into the silence. She keeps her face turned forward, but the back of her hand skims against his knuckles, and he relaxes. She understands. They survived today, and she understands.

“Look,” Jyn murmurs, and Cassian follows her line of sight to the east, where a massive grey shape is rising from the trees. Cassian stops dead and stares.

She’s almost twice as big as the male they just killed, but her coloring is solid slate grey that darkens to black at the edges of her glorious wings. The only color anywhere on her body is a small, pale patch of light blue under her dark, curved beak, a piece of summer sky caught and held in her throat. The dark grey bone ridges on her head are wider, sharper, and the horns that curl under her chin gleam in the sunlight. The trees bend and groan under the powerful downdraft of her wings, and as she climbs from the forest and into the sky, she shrieks loud enough to shatter the stars.

The female stenorel climbs up, up, and then dives. At the last moment, she flares out her mighty wings and skims away to the east, the trees bowing in her wake.

When she’s out of sight, Cassian looks down to see Jyn standing very close, watching him. Her face is bright and open, her mouth rounded in a soft smile. When he looks in her eyes, he can see the flash of the crystal spear, terrifying and deadly. He can see the shimmer of stars on the dark purple ocean at night, the complex twisting wires of the scanner all fitting neatly together, the rushed grip of trembling hands on his bloody shoulder. Fear and ferocity, mystery and understanding, all bound up in a woman who understands what he doesn’t say.

He’s so close that he could kiss her, and hardly have to move at all.

“Jyn,” he says, because it’s the only word he can think to say.

“Thank you,” her voice is low and rough again, but this time it doesn't sound like fear at all, “for saving her family.”

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [Haldress Defense Systems, Limited](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hadlress_Defense_Systems,_Limited) company is an in-universe corporation that does high-end security, and, for the purposes of this fic, makes excellent weapons designed for personal security, too. That their weapons are popular with mercs and certain rebels is also of my own invention, and that certain rebels like the truncheons from their stock is also a headcanon only. The Japrael system is where you will find the planet [Onderon](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Onderon). 
> 
> The _stenorelin_ (singular form: _stenorel_ ) are my own creation, because shuofthewind likes griffins, and when I looked at Dathomir’s creature guide, it was all some variation of “large brown iguana.” I wanted something a little more interesting. The color scheme for the male is based heavily on the [common grackle](https://www.google.com/search?biw=1745&bih=861&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=GX5NW8HlGMKUsgWTnbTwCA&q=common+grackle&oq=common+grackle&gs_l=img.3..0l10.149991722.149993313.0.149993600.14.12.0.2.2.0.110.783.11j1.12.0....0...1c.1.64.img..0.14.787...0i67k1.0.UogorcDtIog) and the [ace flag.](http://www.asexualityarchive.com/the-asexuality-flag/) The female is largely the same except pale blue instead of purple.
> 
> The pink lake full of halophile algae is 100% a real thing in real life. It’s called [ Lake Retba or Lac Rose, it is viciously pink, and it’s packed full of salt-lovin’ algae. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Retba)[Check it out](https://www.google.com/search?q=lake+retba&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3zZDMzaTcAhUFMqwKHeQ0B2cQ_AUICigB&biw=1745&bih=861), guys, it’s really neat.
> 
> I don't really know anything about birds, anatomically speaking. Or cats. Or mythical cat-birds from alien planets. This is the most hand-waving I've ever done in a story, and for this, I ask forgiveness. Just go with it, okay?


	5. stone and story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They don’t walk far, maybe three or four clicks from the pink lake, but the blood oozes from the gouges in his shoulder the whole way, and by the time he spots the towers of grey rising from the red-topped trees, Cassian is decidedly light headed. Jyn eyes his wound with her hand on her back pouch, then hesitates, shaking her head. When she meets his eye, he nods in agreement. “Best clean it first,” he mutters, “ _then_ bacta.”

She scowls, but closes the flap of her pouch and sidles a little closer, her hand hovering an awkward few inches from his hip. He thinks that she means to catch him, should he collapse. He’s grateful at her kindness, and annoyed at the implication that he is so fragile. He debates yanking the remainder of his ruined shirt off and trying to wrap it around the shoulder, but it’s an awkward angle and the fabric isn’t too clean anyway, soaked through with salty algae-infested water, mud, and blood (both the stenorel’s and his own). Jyn’s own clothes are not terribly cleaner, and her embroidered cloak is far too beautiful to smear with his grime. She offers it anyway, and he turns it down as forcefully as he can without being offensive. He keeps his jaw set grimly and his paces even, his head upright and his arm immobile as they walk, and ignores the way that Jyn keeps drifting a little closer every time he stumbles on some root or bush or bolt of pain in his shoulder.

He’s so focused on the simple act of walking forward that he is nearly misses the deep asymmetrical scoring in the forest floor, most visible where the brush thins out and the sound of the crashing sea overrides the rustle of leaves and chattering of small, unseen creatures. Cassian frowns at the marks, which seem to wander around the forest floor in a pattern he can’t recognize. The wind? Too deep, and they are too even when he looks closely. Claw marks. The _stenorel?_ But that creature seemed to prefer flight to walking, and there are no great leaps in the marks, no places where the creature took off and landed.

“What’s this?” he points at a particularly trampled patch of brush, where some of the smaller plants have been torn up under the heavy claw marks.

Jyn waves a hand dismissively. “Rancor.”

Cassian licks his lips, presses his injured arm tighter to his ribs. “Rancor.”

“A herd,” she elaborates in a distracted tone, clearly not terribly concerned about a herd of giant carnivorous monsters roaming the area. “A few hours ago, looks like. Good thing we missed them. You stink of blood.”

“Hm,” Cassian licks his dry lips again and tries not to dwell on the thought that his day could potentially have even _more_ teeth in it than it already did. “Good thing.”

Thankfully, the rancor tracks vanish into the east soon enough; when they break out of the forest at last, there are no more gouges in the earth. He sees the cliffs ahead – tall pillars, dark grey and startlingly geometric, all tightly packed together rising from the trees like a haphazardly built ancient castle jutting from the edge of the forest. Jyn has led him back to the coastline, although significantly south from his U-Wing, and the purple waves crash against the base of the cliffs. For awhile he thinks she is leading him to the far side of the cliffs, the side still in the forest, but instead she takes him straight to the water (wonderful, more salt water to splash at his stinging claw marks). He hesitates at the water’s edge when she strides into the surf, noting dispassionately that the setting sun is throwing a reddish sheen across the darkening water, as if it is no longer water at all but something thicker and harsher - wine, perhaps, or blood. When Jyn realizes he is not following, she twists around to look back to him with the water halfway up her shins, the edge of her cloak fanning out across the surf behind her in the wine dark sea. Logically, he can tell that she’s angling across the uneven broken grey pillars that only just rise from the waves, an indirect path running parallel to the tall cliffs. But he is tired, so tired, pain biting at his shoulder and clenching his back muscles tighter as he walks, the post adrenaline crash of the fight dragging at his stamina and his willingness to follow wherever this strange woman may lead.

So to his exhausted, anemic, fried out brain, it looks as if Jyn is striding out into the dark water until the waves close over her head and she is lost. When she takes another step and the water laps against her knees, he lurches toward her with his hand outstretched. “Don’t,” he says sharply, his voice fracturing. “Don’t go out there.”

It’s hard to tell in the red light of the sunset, but he thinks her face pales. She opens her mouth, closes it again, glances out at the sea, and then back at him. He’s just starting to feel foolish and panicky when she suddenly marches back out of the sea and stands directly in front of him. “I’m here,” she says. It isn’t what he expected her to say (from the look on her face, it isn’t what she expected to say), but it calms his galloping heart anyway.

“Look,” she speaks again into the silence between them, and he follows her nod to a dark recess in the cliffs nearby. It’s only then that he notices the cave, a negative space between two particularly tall clusters of squarish pillars. The purple-red ocean encroaches on the cave, surging deep into the entrance and out of his sight, then dragging back out again with a brisk white spray. The uneven path of broken or sea-worn pillars looks to be the only way in (and, his carefully trained instincts whisper, the only way out).

He could turn around. His mental map of the area is fuzzy, but he knows that he’s south of the U-Wing, and if he follows the shoreline, sooner or later he will reach it. He’s not in such bad shape that he risks passing out and dying a pointless, useless death in the white sands, and he’s reasonably sure that the female _stenorel_ won’t come hunting in his direction while he walks. He _could_ walk. Just turn around and go back to his ship, and his mission, and his life. There is no good reason he should follow her into the cave. No reason that he could write on a report to Command, no way he could justify his trust in a demonstrably violent and armed stranger.

Jyn stands quietly in front of him, close enough that he could simply lift his aching arms and wrap them around her. She stands poised in her careful stillness again, as if she wants to fidget but is controlling the urge. There is red on her hands around her fingernails. Stenorel blood.

 _Cassian!_ she had shouted, and broken the monster’s bones with her bare hands to get to him.

“Sun’s going down,” he says at last, aching and confused and frustrated with himself, with the galaxy, with _everything._ “It’ll be dark in there.”

Jyn shakes her head, but says nothing.

Cassian rubs his hand against his injured arm, a vague and useless attempt to ease some of the dull throbbing now working it’s way down towards his elbow. “Okay,” he says, and he sees lines of tension in Jyn’s spine and jawline ease. “Okay.”

She steps back towards the sea without breaking eye contact. “Stay close,” is all she says, and then she’s walking back out into the surf, although now she moves slowly, waiting with no sign of impatience for him to slosh inelegantly in her wake. He’s too tired for elegance, too worn out to worry that his trousers and boots are sodden again, that he probably looks like five kinds of hell. Cassian merely walks until the water comes to just under his knees, and steps awkwardly up onto the first of the broken stone pillars. Jyn grabs his elbow to steady him once, but he catches his balance easy enough and she gives him a small smile as she slides in front of him, leading the way.

They don’t speak again until they enter the cave, walking carefully along a large stone pillar that has fallen halfway into the water and halfway onto the rocky floor of the cave. Jyn runs lightly up the slight incline and waits for his much slower arrival to the top, hops to the floor, and offers her hand up with an exaggerated curtsy and a completely serious face. Cassian gives her a stern look and jumps down beside her (he doesn’t quite swallow the little grunt of pain as he jolts his shoulder, but he doesn’t mention it and she is gracious enough to pretend she didn’t hear it). The light in here is dim and reddish, reminding him of the Alliance's cruisers' lights during the night cycle, turned red in the public spaces to signal that the majority of the crew was sleeping and reminding the night watch to keep the noise levels low. The entrance to the cave is massive, an arching cathedral of stone where the ceiling is shrouded in red-tinged shadows and the ocean drums like a heartbeat in the narrow canal by his feet. The cave rises too high for the ocean to breach a few meters in, but the cave itself bends away around a corner and out of sight. Around the curve, he imagines, the dying sunlight snuffs out, and he will stumble blindly through the darkness.

Well, he thinks with a hint of bitterness that he does not normally allow himself, at least _that_ feels familiar.

“You won’t fall,” Jyn tells him matter-of-factly, and Cassian would jump in surprise if he had the energy, if every breath wasn’t starting to vibrate through his shoulder in a buzz of pain. She holds out her hand, her face neutral, her body carefully still.

Cassian accepts her hand, but things are starting to feel a little imbalanced, so the moment they start walking forward around the bend of the cave, he asks quietly, “Is this where she lives?” At her confusion, he clarifies. “Your mother.”

Jyn doesn’t stumble, but she’s walking close enough that he feels the little tremor run through her body as she resists the stutter in her feet. Her fingers clamp around his, not painful but close, and she glowers at him. Cassian shrugs his good shoulder, runs his thumb over her knuckles in a soothing gesture before he can think better of it.

She sighs. “Trust goes both ways,” she admits a touch ruefully, which tells him that she was feeling the imbalance too. “No. She doesn’t live here.” Her nose wrinkles a little, and Cassian is too tired to chastise himself for finding it just as cute this time as before. “Although she spends so much time here that I have made her a bed, and a table, and soon I will have to make her a shower and a stove.” She rolls her eyes. “Geologists,” she says, the way a weary parent might say _teenagers_.

“She studies these pillars?”

“Basalt,” Jyn points up into the deepening gloom at what he assumes is more pillars overhead. “Solidified lava from the Paleocene era, cooled and fractured in a tetragonal pattern that the water gradually wore down along hexagonal lines.”

It’s too dark now for her to see his face, but Cassian raises his eyebrows anyway. Their pace has slowed again; he can feel her restraint, how she stays even with his cautious pace, letting him feel his way forward rather than yanking him along a path she obviously knows well. Kindness, he thinks, with that same mix of gratitude and annoyance. He stretches his legs out a little more and tries to hold up his end of their mutual trust.

To distract himself from the thick darkness that has now completely enveloped them, from the burning in his shoulder, and definitely from the warm pressure of her hand, Cassian tries to guess why a Dathomir woman would hang out all day and night in this odd place. “She’s…studying the basalt patterns then? How the stone fractures?”

“No.”

He waits, undeterred by the sudden way she cuts off. It’s a new thing to him too, sharing pieces of himself with someone he shouldn’t know as well as he does. He understands.

It only takes a couple of steps, less time than he expects, and then Jyn sighs and relents. “She’s not studying the basalt. A little longer. You’ll see.”

Cassian squeezes her hand a little to let her know that he hears the apology in her tone. “Does she not, ah, have a light set up to guide her in and out?”

“A little longer,” Jyn replies, and this time there is a note of dry humor in her voice. “Patience.”

“This from the woman who couldn’t stop five minutes and explain her plan before dragging me to fight a giant bird.”

“If I had stopped to explain, we would have lost it. And it’s not a bird. It properly belongs to the _feliformia_ suborder of mammalian genera.”

“That doesn’t sound like a Dathomiri word.”

“Royal Naboo, a dialect used only for political speeches and the most prominent scientific naming conventions.” Her hand shifts in his grip, but she’s only wiggling her fingers more comfortably around his, compensating for his minor stumble when he misjudges a step. “You noted the hallmarks of the _panthera_ genus about the chest and thoracic zone,” she adds in an arch tone. “Of course.”

“Of course.” Cassian realizes he is smiling. “I always pay attention to the thoracic zone when something is trying to eat me.”

Jyn turns her head toward him and smirks. “You’re wiser than you look.”

He starts to fire back, but stops abruptly as he realizes what he’s seeing. Or rather, _that_ he is seeing. In the dim blue light that he only now recalls growing brighter and brighter as they walk, Jyn smiles at his expression and turns her face upward.

Above them, the ceiling has sloped down from an immeasurable height to roughly three or four meters tall. Dozens of long gleaming threads hang from the ceiling in unfamiliar patterns, glittering like a distorted mirror of a starry night sky, or perhaps that brief moment just before a ship jumps to hyperspace and all the stars first begin to stretch. Further into the cave, he can see that the threads grow longer and more numerous, their blue light brightening to white. Some of the strands nearest to him are twisting slightly in the ghost of the ocean breeze that has wound its way into the cave. Cassian squints at them, trying to figure out what, exactly, is causing the light that emits softly from the end of the strand. He can’t tell – whatever it is, the shape of each one is too irregular, too small, and too far away in the low light. What he can see: the patterns of the strands are too regular to feel natural. They hang in rows, with a definite repeating pattern to the lengths; they start extremely long, and then fade into shorter strands, then drop down long again. The rows are different lengths and not necessarily aligned with one another, some concession made to the natural shape of the cave ceiling and passageway, but it definitely looks like someone has deliberately hung these shining little jewels.

But then, the basalt pillars look too even and regular to be natural, too, and yet they are. Perhaps this is just another phenomenon he has never encountered before.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs. The patterns keep drawing his attention, and he finds himself trying to puzzle out the meaning of them, picking apart the lines and fitting them back together as if they are a stolen Imperial code, or one of the number cyphers he and Kay like to invent to challenge each other on long, boring hyperspace flights. So far, he can’t read the message in the strands, but he does notice that the longer rows all seem to be near strange patches on the walls, places where it seems some giant being has rubbed the stone impossibly smooth, turning the dark grey stone a distinctly lighter shade.

Something glimmers in the corner of his eye, a shifting of color that doesn’t match the blue-white scheme of the hanging threads, but when Cassian drops his eyes, all he sees is Jyn with one hand tight around her necklace and the other equally as tight around his own.

“Beautiful,” she echoes, watching him.

He is definitely light headed, clearly he’s lost more blood than he thought, but funny enough the wound doesn’t ache near as much now. Even the painful sting of salt water has faded enough that he can ignore it, at least for awhile.

“What are they?” He doesn’t point or look up again, but Jyn understands anyway.

“Samples.” At his uncertain expression, Jyn sighs, glances at his bare bloody shoulder, and shakes her head. “Come on. She’ll explain it better than I will.”

She drops the stone around her neck (the crystal, it’s a crystal like the ones that hang above him, he can tell by the faint blue glow it emits when she releases it), but she keeps her hold on him. He doesn’t complain. As they walk into the steadily growing white light, Jyn stretches out her free hand and drags her fingertips over one of the largest of those smooth patches in the walls. The stone ignites under her touch – the smooth patches are places where the grey stone has given way to clear crystal, like uneven windows set into the rigid walls. Jyn traces a line of tiny white starbursts that spark silently in the translucent crystal and then fade a few moments later back into peaceful darkness. 

Cassian curls his empty fist tight against his stomach, and tells himself that he doesn’t reach out to the crystal walls himself because it hurts too much to move his arm.

It’s a lie, though, because when Jyn drops his hand at last, he still doesn’t make any attempt to touch the nearest crystal wall. He is not a man that brightens what he touches; it’s stupid perhaps, but he’s afraid to see what the stone would do, if he pressed his bloody fingers against that strange smooth darkness.

Jyn drops his hand just before they turn around another bend in the cave (and he immediately misses it, misses the warmth and the pressure and the sense of connection – shit, he really has been out on this search for too long without any organic company, the doctors on Yavin will probably write more of those snippy notes on his psych eval that will make Mothma’s eyes sad and Draven’s jaw grim; he’ll have to lie, and say he spent time with various contacts in a more familiar setting, or perhaps invent a temporary physical liaison or two).

“I’ve brought someone,” Jyn says loudly, and then marches around the corner, leaving Cassian to follow a little more carefully. His blaster, he reminds himself, is near to his good arm, and at the worst, well, he has a smoker grenade clipped to his belt. He’s reasonably sure it survived the salty pink lake water.

“Finally,” a female voice says from somewhere in the walls. Cassian whirls to face the sound, and then stiffens when a woman walks out from what looks like solid grey stone. It takes his brain a moment to recognize the faint seam in the wall, and realize that he’s standing at just the wrong angle to see that the wall has a gap on his right, but the patterns on the wall are so similar that it gives the illusion of uninterrupted stone.

He only dwells on this revelation for an instant, though, because the woman who walks in commands the entirety of his attention. Short staff in one hand, long knife slung around her waist, three small hammers of varying size and shape hanging from her belt. She is not much taller than Jyn (which means she comes roughly to his chin), and like her daughter, she has fly-away brown hair, a determined set to her jaw, and when she flips her dark cloak briskly behind her shoulders, he can see the toned muscles of her bared arms. Her eyes, however, are so dark they appear almost black, and the patterns drawn on her skin are a mixture of dark blue and alarmingly vivid red. She also wears a flowing sash of bright red around her waist that highlights her loose brown layered skirts, though the rest of her outfit is just as sturdy, plain, and pragmatic as Jyn’s.

“Offworlder,” the woman nods as she brushes past him to a stone workbench set against the far wall. She picks up something clunky that he can’t quite see, does… _something_ to it, and a flare of bright white light chases back the lingering shadows of the cave. The flare outlines her body, turning her into creature of impenetrable darkness and blinding light. Cassian swallows.

Then the woman turns and steps from the bench, leaving the clunky thing on the workbench - a cheap but sturdy halogen work light, the kind found on any construction site in the galaxy. As she steps away from the lamp, the light strikes her more normally, and she turns from strange creature of shadow to Human woman with messy hair and a no-nonsense expression. Cassian mentally smacks himself for being far too dramatic. “Lyra,” she tells him, pointing at her chest as she passes him yet again, this time walking to a mesh bag hanging on a jutting stone ledge. “Sit.” She jerks her head towards the stool by the work bench.

Jyn says something in a language Cassian doesn’t recognize (he catches _stenorel_ and something that might have been _U-Wing),_ but even if the words are foreign to him, her tone is easy enough to decipher. She sounds defensive, and a little frustrated.

Lyra pulls a small white plas-steel box from the mesh bag, and a bundle of cloth. She tosses the cloth to Jyn with a look that Cassian can’t read, and then walks over and plunks the white box into his lap. Ah. Medkit. Clumsily, he flips it open and sorts through the neatly packed but wildly varying contents. He finds a large sterilizer pad and a debris-scanner eventually, and sets to work cleaning out the claw marks, scanning his skin for any foreign materials like dirt, cloth, or poisons.

“That’s filthy,” Lyra pinches the side of his tattered shirt, then drops it and moves away, sitting at a rough wooden table that is covered in small sealed containers, various sized bags, and what looks like a pile of dirty cloth scraps. “You’ve got enough problems, Offworlder. Be rid of that one.”

Cassian glances at Jyn, who rolls her eyes subtly, then holds out her hand. Well, no point in being embarrassed about it. The shirt really is worthless now, not even in good enough shape for scrap rags, if he’s honest. He wrangles himself free of the shirt’s remains and gingerly sets them into Jyn’s hand. The cool air of the cave makes his skin pebble, but Cassian keeps his face neutral and his shoulders down and back (as much as he can without wincing from the pain). This, he telegraphs with his body language, is completely normal and he is in no way bothered by his vulnerable state, the indifferent glance of the older woman at the table, nor the soft, startled way that Jyn flicks her eyes across him before she turns on her heel and walks away with his ragged shirt dangling from her fingers.

“Alliance,” Lyra says abruptly, and Cassian jerks his head up to see her sorting through a small basket of stone chips. As he watches, she selects a larger stone, holds it up to the halogen light, and then sets it on the workbench and raps it sharply with one of the tools on her belt. Flakes of stone begin to pepper the work surface as she wears the stone down, tiny chip by tiny chip. She doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t answer right away, letting the silence drag out, punctuated by the sound of the debris-scanner beeping and the _chip-chip-chip_ of her hammer on the stone.

Cassian finishes cleaning the last and longest cut on his shoulder, and waits for the scanner to tell him that he’s clear of contaminants. Jyn, who has returned without his ruined shirt and perched on the low wooden bedframe shoved against the wall near the workbench, points to a red ball strapped into the top of the medkit. He recognizes it as the same kind of bacta sponge she had used on his hand, and pulls it free. He squeezes it experimentally for a moment until he catches the sharp citrus smell of bacta, and rubs it carefully on the wounds. When he’s clean and medicated, Cassian sits as casually as he can and takes a small gamble. “Coruscant,” he says, watching Lyra’s hands still for only the briefest of moments on the little stone before resuming her tapping.

“That’s in the file. And our voices.” She shakes her head dismissively and carries on before Cassian can ask what file she’s talking about. “You get three.” Lyra gives the small stone one final brisk tap and then holds the stone up. The grey basalt has been sloughed off, and now she holds a cloudy crystal. Under her fingertips, blue-white sparks crackles in the surface of the stone.

Cassian turns to Jyn for help. Jyn takes a breath as if she means to speak, and then deflates. She shakes her head, hops up from the bed, and hands him the bundle of cloth that Lyra had thrown her. It’s a shirt, sturdy, brown, lightly worn around the seams…it looks like a cheap Human male shirt from ten to twenty years ago, and when Jyn hands it to him, her eyes are dark even in this brightly lit workspace. He almost shoves it back to her; he wants no part of whatever has put _that_ expression on her face.

On the other hand, he can’t very well walk around this planet shirtless, especially not with night falling and herds of rancor running around. Cassian takes the shirt. Jyn drifts to the side of the workbench and picks up another grey stone. This one has a bare patch on one side, and when Jyn pokes the clear part of the stone, a white spark blooms like a flower under her fingertip.

Cassian turns back to Lyra. “Three.”

“Mm-hm.” Lyra is holding the newly revealed crystal under a microscanner, squinting into the viewpiece and making notes on a datapad by her elbow. Or possibly she is simply doodling, because the symbols are unreadable to Cassian, and every time he tries to focus on them, they squirm and change, and after a few minutes his head starts to ache. He resolutely turns away.

He waits a moment longer, then gives up. “Three what?”

She lifts her head, squints at him in much the same way she only moments ago was squinting at the stone in her hand, and then turns back to her work. “Questions, Alliance. I’m busy, and I have questions of my own. So you get three.” She makes a sharp gesture with one hand without looking up, a ‘hurry along’ motion that reminds him strongly of the grandmothers on Fest.

Cassian considers this. It’s not the first time he’s played that kind of game, but usually he’s playing it against rambunctious drunks in cantinas (who will always give up considerably more than three answers if Cassian is funny or charming or generous with the bar tab), or against frightened people in back alleys furtively giving him what little bits they managed to glean from their Imperial overlords while they look over their shoulders (in which case, he merely has to stay calm and in control, and they usually tell him everything even when they clearly want to run away). He has the feeling that no amount of charm, humor, or commanding presence is going to wrest more from this woman than she wants to give him.

Finally, he decides to stick to the closest mysteries. He doesn’t really need to know what’s going on with her crystal patterns or her daughter. (He _doesn’t._ It has no bearing whatsoever on the rebellion, on the Empire, on the weapon that Galen Erso might be finishing even at this very moment. He doesn’t need to know anything about Jyn other than whether or not she will attack him. No matter how green her eyes are.) “What did you mean when you said ‘Coruscant’ was in the files?”

Lyra snorts, as if he’s just told a childish joke. When he doesn’t retract it, she lifts her head and stares at him. “The files,” she says flatly, as if this is a terribly simple concept and she’s surprised he needs it spelled out.

Cassian spreads his slightly bloody hands out, palms up, and lifts an eyebrow.

Lyra frowns. “I expect more of Rebel Intelligence,” she says severely, and Cassian’s spine locks up. Nearby, Jyn shifts in her seat. He shoots her a glare, but she simply looks at him, unmoved.

He’s careful not to blurt another question out, but Cassian lets his confusion show on his face.

Lyra lifts a hand and points. “Traveling with an Imperial security droid that you call a free droid. No Imperial would free his droid, no civilian is permitted to own a KX without permits from the government.” She jabs her finger at his chest. “Rebel,” she labels him. Cassian hesitates, and then sighs, because there is no trace of doubt in her face. He doesn’t waste his breath denying it. Her finger moves from his chest to his face, for some reason. “Not Partisan.” That startles more than anything else, because why would she even bring up a small, ultra violent cadre of renegades that were kicked out of the Alliance years ago? He’s certainly never mentioned the Partisans to Jyn, or at all while he’s been on Dathomir. But Lyra doesn’t pause to explain this any more than the rest, so he keeps his mouth shut and lets her continue. “Dressed like a traveler, not enough weapons, walked wounded into a stranger’s territory, unshaved face, hair too long for Core fashion, _sloppy_ ,” Lyra says, and Cassian sees Jyn’s mouth curve into a small smile out of the corner of his eye. He keeps his own expression stoic, though _sloppy_ scratches at his pride. “But armed,” Lyra jabs her accusing finger at his belt, “cautious, quiet, keeps his back to the wall and his eye on the exit.” She snaps her fingers, and finally drops her hand. “Spy. Rebel, but not Partisan. Alliance.”

“What files?” Cassian says, unrelenting and unwilling to confirm her startlingly clear analysis. He wonders how much of this she learned from Jyn (definitely the bit about Kay), how much she knows through her…strange Dathomir customs, and what the Partisans have to do with any of it.

Lyra turns back to her rock, _chip, chip, chip._ “Alliance files. Rebel intel files. On us.”

Cassian crosses his arms, and waits.

It doesn’t work nearly as well on Lyra as it does on Jyn, and he’s not particularly surprised. He’s given her nothing (nothing willingly, anyway), and she’s given him nothing back. She doesn’t look at him like she’s studying his face, like she knows him, somehow. In fact, Lyra barely looks at him at all, except when she’s taking his measure.

When it becomes clear that she is perfectly willing to wait him out, Cassian forces himself to stay calm and ask in an even voice that betrays none of his frustration, “Why would the Rebellion have files on you?”

Lyra throws a glance to Jyn, who is watching them both intently. “Saw.”

“Saw,” he repeats flatly, and then it all comes together in his mind, scars, Partisans, _Saw_. “Gerrera? _Saw Gerrera?”_  He takes a deep breath, and looks down at Lyra’s stone-calloused hands, her slightly hunched stance over the workbench, her back turned squarely to him as she squints at her rock. “You were in Gerrera’s cadre,” he says, and then shakes his head, turns to Jyn, looks at the scars on her arms and the wary way she stands, ready for an attack, controlled violence coiled within her muscles.. “No. _You_ were.”

Jyn nods.

“She was eight,” Lyra says sharply from the bench, still not looking up. Jyn’s face turned hard and just a little defensive – Cassian sensed the bitter undercurrent of an old argument welling up in the small space. “She had just lost her father. Saw should never have offered to teach her to fight back.”

“ _You_ wanted to fight back,” Jyn snaps, but there’s a resigned note under the anger; they’ve had this conversation before, and nothing has changed.

“ _I_ was an adult,” Lyra says flatly. “It was an informed choice. You were a child, and he had no business taking you off world without my consent.”

“The Sisters taught me to fight anyway,” Jyn folds her arms and leans against the wall. “Saw just let me use those skills for - ”

“And look how well that worked out for you,” Lyra cuts her off and nods at her arms. “Sixteen years old, and he left you on Tamsye Prime with a knife and no way to get home. Took you a year to make it back.”

Something brittle and full of pain passes over Jyn’s face before she turns away, and Cassian’s stomach twists. His hand suddenly feels empty and cold, and he balls it into a fist against his leg and deliberately turns his head. _Saw’s Partisans_ , he thinks, detaching himself from the moment and bringing the information up in his mind’s eye like a datapad. Lyra and Jyn, Coruscant natives who migrated to Dathomir; Jyn’s father died when she was eight and somehow they knew Saw Gerrera, who took Jyn as a fighter in his cadre for awhile, at least until she was sixteen. It ended badly between them – but that’s good, because the Alliance hasn’t worked with Saw in years and will be more suspicious of a recruit who was still tied to him in some way.

Not that he’s recruiting her. (Although, admittedly, she would be an incredible asset for the rebellion.)

“Third question,” Lyra says.

Cassian opens his mouth to ask about the layout of the planet, where the rival clan that enslaves men can be avoided, if she knows anything about tracking devices or Imperial forces in the system, something useful or practical or at least immediately relevant to his situation. He’s almost sure that he means to ask one of those questions, so he’s shocked to hear himself say, “Why did I dream of an ocean of blood?”

Lyra’s head jerks up. Across from him, Jyn goes utterly still, her face still turned away.

The cave is silent, save for the distant crashing of waves.

Lyra rises from her seat briskly and walks across the cave, wiping her dusty hands on her brown skirt. Cassian tenses, but she breezes right past him and stops in front of Jyn. “She’ll make you choose.”

Lyra’s body blocks Cassian’s view of Jyn’s face, but he can see her shoulders tense, her spine straighten as if she’s preparing for a blow.

Cassian stares, because there is no part of that sentence that doesn’t baffle him. Who is ‘she’? Why, and how, will she make someone as clearly independent and self-sufficient as Jyn choose anything? Choose  _what?_ He opens his mouth to ask, but Jyn speaks before he can.

“She won’t know.”

Lyra snorts again, and then steps to the side, pointing to Cassian. “Can you hide it?”

He’s just about had enough of this. “Hide  _what?_ ”

“I can,” Jyn tells her mother with her chin tilted up, defiant again.

Lyra raises an eyebrow and gestures towards Cassian again, not quite an order, definitely a challenge. Jyn’s jaw sets grimly, and she pushes herself reluctantly away from the wall.

Cassian stands too. Whatever is going on, he doesn’t want to get caught flat footed.

Jyn stares at Lyra with an unreadable expression for a long moment, and he may not understand the context, but Cassian knows a battle of wills when he sees it. He slips his hand to his blaster; his damaged arm still aches distantly but it’s functional. If only he knew what to do with it.

Jyn sighs. She turns and walks towards him, and slowly lifts one hand to her crystal necklace. Cassian steps back, and Jyn pauses, meeting his eyes.

There is no aggression there, and to his surprise, the resignation fades as she looks at him. Instead, he sees…uncertainty? Hesitation? Fear?

Jyn bites her lower lip, lets it go. And then, slowly, tentatively, she lifts the corner of her mouth in a small smile. It feels like a secret, that smile, a little in-joke between them –  _isn’t this ridiculous? Why is this even happening to us? –_ and without thinking about it, he relaxes. It _is_ ridiculous, and confusing, and a little embarrassing (her mother, after all, is staring at him so hard he imagines he will start smoking in a moment). But there’s no threat in Jyn, only a kind of…eagerness. Hope, he thinks, tempered with bitter experience, but still there. Still shining in her eyes.

Hope for what?

Cassian realizes that he’s stepped forward again, meeting her half way. His heart thumps in his chest, painfully loud. He wonders if Jyn can hear it. If Lyra can hear it. If either of them really understand what’s happening here, between them. It would be nice if someone did.

Hope for  _what?_

Slowly, Jyn pulls the crystal over her head and holds it out to him. She doesn’t open her hand, simply holds the crystal at chest level. He can’t tell if she’s offering it to him or trying to ward him off with it. He doesn’t move, and the conspiratorial smile drops off her face, replaced with an uncertain frown. It bothers him more than it should, so Cassian steps forward again, carefully avoiding her outstretched fist but moving in close to her body. Jyn brings her arm down between them in a more natural pose, and lets her white knuckled fingers relax around the stone.

She smiles at him again, just a little, barely there except he’s close enough to see it, close enough to know that it’s real, that it’s meant for him and no other. Close enough to smile back, just a little, and know that only Jyn will understand why. _This is so ridiculous. Why are we even nervous?_

He lifts his hand and curls his fingers around hers, around the stone. Jyn’s eyes turn grave and serious, focused on something within herself.

Cassian waits patiently, because whatever is happening, this is her show. Her hand feels warm in his again, calloused around the knuckles, scarred at the wrists. He wonders how that happened, and when, and if she will ever tell him. Absently, he traces the pad of his thumb over the largest scar on the back of her wrist.

The crystal flares to life in their hands, a riot of shimmering colors that glow like a small nebula around their fingers. Cassian doesn’t twitch away in surprise, but Jyn does, jerking her hand back and pressing the crystal against her chest. Her eyes are wide and her face pale, and the terrible transformation from hope to fear rips through him sharper than any beast’s claws. She looks ready to  _bolt_  from him.

“No, no,” Cassian steps forward without thinking and sets his hands on her shoulders. “It’s okay, it’s okay, see? We’re okay,” he murmurs, no idea what he’s saying or why, no idea what’s happening at all, knowing only that his insides bleed when she looks at him with fear.

Jyn swallows, closes her eyes, bows her head. Cassian tugs lightly, ready to let go if she resists, but she doesn’t. She lets him pull her close, his hands still on her shoulders, and presses her forehead to his chest. “It’s okay,” he says again, over and over. “It’s okay. It’s done. It’s done and we’re okay.”

“We’re okay,” Jyn murmurs, and heaves a sigh. “It’s done.”

“Oh no,” Lyra says dryly from the other side of the workroom. “She’ll definitely never figure it out. You’re a _master_ of deception.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cave is modelled on [ Fingal’s Cave on the Island of Staffa (coast of Scotland)](https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3709/9191567337_522a7a3ec6_b.jpg). In this story, however, the basalt pillars are wound through with kyber crystal veins. Lyra’s hanging crystals are based on [Waitomo Caverns](https://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2015/06/JosephMichaelLuminosity1.jpg.653x0_q80_crop-smart.jpg), where glowworms hang down from the ceiling and create a starry night effect. Lyra's patterns are, of course, much more scientifically positioned.
> 
> The idea that kyber crystals have an oil-slick rainbow glow when they interact with people is pretty much just in my head, invented for my story “you give me something” awhile back because I’ve always liked the concept of a stone that doesn’t just refract light, but also emotion and intention. I've buffed that concept up a bit here.


	6. aware and oblivious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  

* * *

 

“What does it mean?” Cassian asks her in an undertone, watching Jyn’s back as she leaps along the basalt pillars over the purple sea and back to the shore. The sun has set fully now, and the moon not yet risen, but he can make out the light stone path well enough. He’s less confident about crossing it again in the dark, but that isn’t why he hangs back a moment to talk to Lyra, who stands impassively at the mouth of the cave with her arms folded inside her robes.

He licks his lips, and he can’t quite believe he’s saying this but something in him is almost desperate to know. “The…the dream. You said I wasn’t real. So did she, when we met.” Cassian turns to Lyra and holds out his hands, palms up and pleading. “What does it mean?”

She stares at him, tilts her head to the side slightly (a movement that reminds him of Jyn so strongly he can’t stop himself from glancing up, marking where she stands near the beach).

“You had your three,” Lyra says at last, and then turns her back on him.

 

* * *

 

A red moon glows like a bloody eye over the world when Cassian and Jyn make it back to the U-Wing. Cassian still aches from the stenorel’s claws, and the night’s chill is working through even the thick material of the shirt he’s borrowed. Exhaustion presses down on him, turning his head heavy and his steps slow. Jyn moves at his side, light and swift as a shadow, but he’s caught her rubbing at her eyes discreetly a few times, and rolling her shoulders like she’s resettling some weight. Out on the beach, the U-Wing is dark save for a small glimmer of light visible in the main viewport of the cockpit. Probably Kay, waiting up for him. Cassian wonders why his friend didn’t insist on following him out into the forest when Jyn dragged him off. It’s unlike Kay to be content with staying behind.

He’ll ask later, after a few hours of sleep and maybe a quick buzz in the U-Wing’s tiny sonic shower.

“Does he always do that?” Jyn jerks her chin towards the U-Wing. “Wait up for you like that?”

Cassian decides that pretending he’s _not_ falling down tired is pointless. “Yes,” he says, muffled a little by his palms as he scrubs at the dirt and dried salt on his face in a vague attempt to get a little more blood flowing through his chilled skin. He lets his shoulders slump, worn by the effort of holding his upper body as steady as he can. The Blue Coral bacta has settled into the claw marks by now, and they don’t hurt as much as he knows they could. All the same, he’s cold and tired and filthy.

And yet he makes no move to walk out of the dark forest and into the U-Wing down the beach. “Kay doesn’t need sleep,” he tells her as he drops his hands. A small starburst of pinkish salt has dried on her face, just next to her right ear, and it sparkles like tiny rubies in the red moonlight. “So it’s the tactically smart move, to have someone on standby. His words, not mine.”

“He sounds like a fussbudget,” she says placidly, and Cassian huffs a weary laugh.

“Fussbudget? Who says fussbudget?”

She shrugs, her mouth curved into a soft smile, her lips redder than usual in the moonlight.

He really needs to go inside. Shower. Sleep. His head is…way too fuzzy.

Cassian finds himself instead hunting for something to say to her, something to keep the conversation going. “Does your mother wait up for you?”

Internally, he winces at the words. Poorly phrased, Andor, that probably sounded like some kind of lame pick up line.

But instead of looking offended or amused, Jyn frowns, turns to look at the U-Wing, at the light in the cockpit.

“When I left,” she says quietly into the darkness around them, “She was…angry. She didn’t want me to – didn’t think Saw would – I was too young for the war. That’s what she said. I told her I was too young to be a refugee, too young for my father to be gone, too young to live under the shadow of the Empire, but that didn’t stop any of it from _happening_. She was…so angry, but I went anyway. I wanted to fight. Saw gave me a blaster and a blade and I…I went.” Jyn closes her eyes, shivers. Cassian clenches his fists to keep from reaching out. “So when I came back - ” She sighs. “When Saw dumped me, it took me a long time to make my way back. Had to work for food or passage, had to steal, got into a few fights with gangsters and bounty hunters, that sort of thing. I was scarred up, blood on my hands, knives in my sleeves. And when I walked into her house, I thought…” She makes a helpless gesture, eyes still closed.

“That she would chase you out,” he finishes for her.

Jyn opens her eyes and looks up at him, and this time her eyes don’t defy the light. Rather than bright green, they look dark as the night, and terribly sad. “That, or she wouldn’t even know me. I had been gone years. I was a child when I left. I was…not a child, when I came back.”

“There are no children in war,” Cassian nods. “Only young soldiers.”

“When I walked in,” she continues, looking down at his chest. Her hands fist into her cloak, pulling it tightly around her body. He wonders how well it is warding off the night’s cold. “When I walked in, she had a pan full of fried _musa_ fruit on the stove, and two plates on the table. _Musa_ is – was – my favorite thing, when I was little. It doesn’t grow here, so she had to trade for it a day or two before I came back.” Jyn gives him a strange look that he is too exhausted to interpret. “She doesn’t like _musa_ herself. She just...had it. Ready. And I walked in with my head high and all these words to say to defend myself if she turned and –“ she takes a deep breath . “She said, wash your hands. Dinner’s ready. I never…I never really asked her why. Or how.”

“You are her daughter,” Cassian shrugs, regretting it immediately when his injured shoulder twinges. “She obviously loves you. Even if she didn’t agree with your choice.”

“I don’t regret it.” Her jaw is set, her eyes fierce as she glares at him, as if he’s said something disparaging. He doesn’t take offense; he’s only a surrogate for the person she wants to hurl these words at, and that’s fine. “Saw _saved_ us, when the Empire came. Saved us, brought us here to be safe. And he was right,” she pauses, her voice wavers, “ _You_ were right. It’s not enough to just hide and hope it all goes away out there. To just pretend the Empire isn’t out there taking and taking. So I don’t regret any of it, even if he – even if it didn’t – if -”

“I know,” Cassian’s control breaks a little when her voice does, and he puts his hands on her shoulders, shivering under the embroidered cloak. “Jyn, I know.” And he does, he gets it. He doesn’t need her to tell him all the things she did or saw when she fought with the Partisans. He’s familiar enough with Intelligence’s record on Gerrera that he can imagine it anyway, and it makes his stomach turn inside his body but he keeps his face calm and his hands steady on her shoulders. She probably wasn’t the only child soldier recruited in Gerrera’s cadre, but she must have been very young, if she served for years with him and came home at seventeen. No wonder her mother was furious.

Very young, now that he thinks about it. He blinks, because something in the math does not quite compute, and he opens his mouth to ask for clarification because her mother had expected him to know who she was and that was just -

“Cassian,” Jyn murmurs, and his thoughts abruptly derail as he realizes she’s shifted closer, or he’s pulled her closer, “Do you remember the third true thing yet?”

The third…ah. That. “No,” he admits. “I haven’t really tried though.” He shakes his head. “I can never remember the third thing.”

Jyn swallows, hard. He’s not sure why. “I forget…” she trails off, then seems to come to some decision, and lifts her chin to look him right in the eye like she’s daring him to do something. “I forget that one, too,” she says. “I forget it all the time.”

The words pull at something in his mind, but he’s so damn _tired_ , and she’s so close, and this was probably a bad idea. He needs to go inside and sleep. But she’s still looking at him, almost expectantly, and he has no idea why. “Does it really matter?”

Under his palms, her shoulders slump. He’s failed her somehow, a thought that makes him feel even more worn and ragged around the edges than before. “I guess not.” Before he can ask what she’s looking for, what he’s missed, she shakes her head as if to clear it and says, “Your uncle.”

Cassian almost draws his hands back, startled by yet another change in direction. “Yes?”

“The one who came to Dathomir and learned the three truths. He died with the…the others? Your family?”

Cassian’s jaw flexes, but she doesn’t look like she’s interrogating him; she’s biting her lip, clearly trying to work her way to something. He hesitates, and then decides to follow her lead. See where she takes him this time. “Yes, he died in the war. The year before the Empire rose, in a protest against the Republic.” He feels her jolt under his hands, but he doesn’t stop, can’t seem to stop now, the words ripping out of him like something’s come loose and unmoored inside his chest. “My father died that day, too. My mother and other uncles and aunts and cousins, they all died about a year later, when the Republic bombed the factories on Fest. They were trying to destroy them before the Empire took them, or so the official records on Coruscant claim.” He doesn’t even try to keep the bitterness from his words, and Jyn doesn’t flinch again, letting his vitriol burst over her. “I was six. I watched the factory go up from my school. The rest of my cousins died in the war, when we joined the old Separatist cell. I was the only one left by the time I was nine, and Dra- an Alliance agent found me in the ruins of my city.”

“Big family,” she says at last, when he finally stops.

“We were,” he agrees, and the anger burns out of him as quickly as it flared up, leaving him hollow and swaying slightly on his feet.

Jyn sets her hands lightly against his chest, her palms pressing on either side of his sternum, steady and warm. “I’m sorry.”

He sighs, watches the moonlight glittering on the salt by her ear. “It was a long time ago.”

“Is there not…” she lets go of her cloak and makes another uncertain gesture. “Anyone else? Family, a…partner? Child?”

Cassian laughs, or at least makes a grating sound that could pass as one. “No. No one else. Except Kay. I got him when I was…fourteen, I think.” He catches himself rubbing his hands absently on Jyn’s shoulders as he sifts through his memories, and makes himself stop. He can’t quite summon the energy to make himself drop his hands altogether, and anyway her hands are still pressed against his ribs, her body so close he can feel her heat faintly against his front. There doesn’t seem to be any point in letting go. “You know…” he muses half to himself, “I never meant to keep him with me. I took out the chip, but I meant to let him go. When he asked to come with me – well, actually, he _assumed_ he was coming with me – I should have said no. But…I didn’t.”

Jyn leans forward at last, and rests her forehead against his collarbone. Cassian sighs, and rests his cheek against the top of her head. She smells of damp earth, polished steel, blaster oil, and somehow the combination is soothing. Familiar.

“You were lonely,” she says against his chest.

He reflexively starts to deny it, but the red moon vanishes behind a cloud and they are enveloped in a thick cloak of darkness. He can hear the sea crashing in the distance, see the faint glimmer of Kay’s light in the cockpit, and feel Jyn’s breath warming his chest through the borrowed shirt. All his secrets suddenly seem small and silly and safe, and he finds himself instead sliding his arms around her shoulders, lightly, gently, definitely easy for her to shrug off if she wants. “Young,” he says into her hair, his heavy eyelids drifting shut. Force help him, he might just drift off right here, standing up and still gritty with salt and blood. “I was young.”

“Is that why you took the control mod out of K in the first place?” he can hear the smile in her voice as she winds her fingers into the loose material of the shirtfront. “Because you were young and idealistic?”

The moon bursts back out from behind the clouds, casting a faint reddish glow over everything, and Cassian pries his eyes apart to check that they are still alone, still safely hidden in the edge of the dark forests of Dathomir. In his arms, Jyn shifts a little closer, as easily as if she’s been here before, as if she knows exactly how to fit herself against him. Her cloak has fallen back a little over her shoulders, and he can see the blue and green markings on her skin have mostly smeared or washed off after repeated exposure to the salt of the pink lake and the red ocean. In her rough but practical clothes and without the markings of the Dathomiri clans on her, she could easily pass as any random working-class Human in the galaxy, should she chose to do so. The thought warms him, for some reason. He pushes it away, because there are just too many heavy things attached to it, just too many things he doesn’t want to think about right now.

Instead, he keeps his voice light, his eyes half-shut as he watches her in the moonlight. “Who says I’m not still young and idealistic?”

She leans back, and he slips his hands back to her shoulders delicately, prepared to let her move away. Instead, she simply raises one hand from his chest to his face. He holds still, barely even breathing, as she traces a delicate finger around the lines around his mouth, his eyes, dangerously close to his lips. “Are you?”

He can see the green of her eyes again, subdued in the shadows, but still bright enough, filled with a fire that could warm his frozen bones, or burn him to the core, and he’s not entirely sure he wouldn’t welcome either option.

“Well, young anyway,” he says, and then suddenly and without warning, something clicks in his brain. “Jyn,” he straightens, ignoring the dull pain in his shoulder or the weariness of his protesting muscles. Under his hands, she goes still. “You were seventeen when you left the Partisans, and you spent years with them before that, yes?” She nods, a short, abortive move, as if she’s not sure she wants to answer. “How old were you when you joined them?”

Jyn hesitates. “Ten,” she says at last.

“So you were even younger, when you came here. When Saw brought you and your mother here.”

She nods again, and pulls a little away. Cassian lets his hands drop, lets her move away, because he doesn’t mean to make her feel caged but – “How old? How old were you, when he brought you two here?” He remembers the odd look on Lyra’s face, when he didn’t know why the Alliance would have files on her. He wracks his brain for everything he ever read about Erso's family, about the child he saw with Gerrera in the grainy footage on Mandalore. “Between the ages of six and nine?”

Jyn shrugs, or perhaps only rolls her shoulders to allow her cloak to swing back around her body. In the moonlight, her face is now the only thing he can really see, though she is heavily shadowed, her head bent as she watches him through her eyelashes. He barely notices. His mind, so groggy a moment ago, now buzzes. Coruscanti accents on both of them, mother and child, connection to Saw Gerrera, missing father –

_Missing father._

“Jyn,” Cassian says. “What was your father’s name? When was the last time you were in contact with your father?”

Her eyes widen, and then shutter closed, and she steps back from him. No, wait, don’t, this is important, he’s been chasing these fragments for months, hunting the whispers and scraps of information about a nightmare weapon for _years_. He was ready to give up, to despair that it was all lost, and now _here she is_ , if he’s right, if he’s not just hallucinating all these coincidences, sweet fucking Force _, please_ , let him be right.

“He's gone,” Jyn says, and pulls her cloak tighter at the throat, her hand pale against the dark fabric before she tucks it away out of sight. “Dead. The Empire…He’s gone.”

Cassian shakes his head, because there’s something she’s not telling him, and if that something is the name _Galen Erso_ than he’s finally found the best possible lead in the galaxy to the Imperial scientist heading the biggest weapon project that the Alliance has ever uncovered. He needs to know the truth. The Alliance needs to know.

“Jyn, please,” he asks, or begs, or demands, he’s so keyed up now that he can barely track the words coming from his own mouth, his heart thumping hard in his chest. “Who is your father?”

“He’s _gone_ ,” she snarls again. “For _fifteen_ years. What does it matter now?”

Cassian thinks of an ocean of blood, and his mouth doesn’t feel quite connected to his brain anymore, none of him feels quite connected, he feels almost drunk on the exhaustion and the elation, so what he says next startles even him. “Is that who you see,” he asks, his voice rasping slightly before he swallows the salt in his mouth. “In the dream? Is it your father, walking into an ocean of blood?”

She flinches. That odd, disappointed expression is back on her face, like he’s let her down again, failed some test she hasn’t told him he's taking. “No.”

It makes him angry, that disappointed look, angry and frustrated with her odd behavior, with her cagey refusal to answer his questions. Her hand flashes against the dark cloak, he thinks she’s readjusting the throat of the cloak again but then he sees her fingers curl into a fist against her collarbone, clutching her crystal tight.

“What about that?” He points at her throat, at the crystal gleaming faintly red with reflected moonlight between her fingers. “Tell me why it glows when I touch it.”

“Not you,” she snaps. “Us.”

Cassian spreads his hands wide, unimpressed with her deflection.

“It’s…some people think…” she speaks slowly, as if she’s picking every word carefully. “They think that it is a kind of…sign. That the Force has a task…quest…some great calling that must be done. That it wants us to do. It’s just,” she tucks the crystal under her cloak again and folds her arms, vanishing inside the dark cloth. “It’s better not to tell the – better not to tell anyone.”

He catches her stumble on the last word, the name or title that she swallows back, and for some reason, this makes him angry too. So many damn secrets, and he’s tried not to push – but can’t she just give him one? This one important thing? The galaxy could be riding on this information, the Alliance certainly is, and she just keeps piling the secrets higher and higher, keeping him shut out.

“Your father,” he tries again, a little desperately. “Just tell me his name. If he’s dead, you don’t need to protect him any more.”

She only shakes her head again.

He changes tacks, looking for another way in. A part of him is shouting in the back of his head, he’s doing this wrong, he’s pushing her away instead of reeling her in, but the idea of trying to trick the information out of her is repulsive, and he can’t get his thoughts ordered properly to even try anything but the direct approach. “Not to tell who? This “she” that you and your mother kept talking about? Who is “she,” Jyn? Can you not tell me that?”

Jyn steps back again at his tone, but he’s starting to not care how much distance she puts between them.

“There are those,” she says haltingly, “who would send me away from here. Or would try to keep _you_ here, if they thought the calling…” she bites her lip, looks away from him.

Cassian throws his hands up, rolling his eyes. He doesn’t have _time_ for this. “What _calling?”_

And he sees the moment he loses her, sees it as clearly as if there were a line between them and he’s just watched it snap in half. Jyn’s face goes wary and distant, as unfamiliar and dangerous as the day she dropped off the U-Wing roof and onto his chest, a stranger on a planet where he is only a trespasser. “What does it matter?” Her voice is as flinty as her expression, and she reaches up and pulls her hood over her head. The dark cloth shields her eyes from him, and when she lowers her hands, he can see nothing but the pale line of her chin and the moon-reddened curve of her lips. “You’re leaving and I’m staying here.”

Cassian’s heart twists painfully in his chest, a terrible ache that overrides the dull ache of the rest of his body. He draws in a shaky breath, but there is nothing to say. She’s right. She left this fight, and he never will. She has a place and a family and a life, and he has war and lies and an inevitable nameless death in a back alley of some Imperial hellhole.

The woman in the cloak seems to waver in the shadows, a dark formless shape against the black trees, the red moon, as unreal as any dream, and just as out of reach.

His eyes sting with salt and blood and the crushing exhaustion of his life.

Cassian walks away.

 

* * *

 

The U-Wing door slides open when he is still several steps away. Cassian wonders dully if Kay was watching any of…whatever just happened in the nearby woods. Maybe on infrared, or one of his other scanners. Can his internal scanners reach that far? It hardly matters. It’s done. The anger still sits in his gut like a smoldering wreck, guttering out slowly and painfully as he climbs into the ship and the cargo door closes behind him. Kay’s fixed the bent door rail. Good.

“Have you completed your bonding?” Kay asks from the cockpit, turning to scan him with blue optics.

Cassian stares at him, too burned out to even being processing that question.

Kay’s optics flick white again as he finishes his scan, and then his friend rises from the co-pilot seat and stomps into the cargo bay. “You do not appear to be as emotionally satisfied as I calculated you would be,” he says. “Clearly I have missed some important variables.”

Cassian nods, because, _clearly_.

Kay hunkers down slightly, his soothing-the-confusing-organic stance. It’s a little condescending when he does that, a little sweet. At the moment, Cassian can’t force himself to care about either. “Cassian,” Kay says, “Did you have a nice date?”

Cassian closes his eyes. “How many hours in a day cycle on this planet?”

Kay’s chassis whirs, and then, to Cassian’s infinite relief, he straightens (more or less) and replies, “Twenty four, galactic, standard.”

“We leave in twenty four hours,” Cassian kneels stiffly to untie his boots, stubbornly ignoring the plethora of screaming muscles all over his abused body. “Tracking device or no tracking device,” he grunts. “We’re leaving.” He kicks off his boots and lets them fall into a sloppy pile by the door. He’ll care about that later. Right now, he desperately needs a shower, needs to scrub off the grit and the salt and the feel of warm hands on his chest.

“The odds that we will be immediately pursued and attacked,” Kay says, watching him stumble toward the ‘fresher in the back of the ship, “are eighty-eight percent.”

Cassian yanks off the borrowed shirt; there’s a tag on the inside, _Made With Pride On Aria Prime_ , and it’s too big to be Lyra or Jyn’s, was it her father’s? Was it _Galen Erso’s?_ He supposes he will never know. The embers in his gut flare up for a moment, and he throws the shirt in a messy heap on the floor. “Factor in the organic variable,” he calls back to Kay, and strips the rest of the way. It would be more efficient to use the sonic while dressed, but he can’t stand the feel of these clothes right now, can’t tolerate the grate of salt one minute more.

“You appear to have had a direct encounter with the creature from this afternoon,” Kay says, looking at his clawed-up shoulder.

Cassian steps into the narrow closet with the sonic plates on the roof and floor, the whole space just barely wide enough for his shoulders, and deep enough that his body alone fills half of it. The sonic plates buzz as he slaps the shower on. “Add the variable, Kay.”

“Which one?”

“We’ve been here days, and they haven’t found us,” he growls, hating to talk while the fuzzy energy of the sonic runs over his skin and buzzes his teeth. “They are probably only chasing us on a tip that we’re Alliance anyway. We might not be worth the time spent waiting for us. There are better bounties out there.”

“You want me to add a factor of greed to my calculations?”

Cassian waits another thirty seconds, gritting his teeth as he watches a crust of salt forming on the floor beneath his bare feet before the sonic dissolves it, too. “Frustration,” he snaps, and steps out of the sonic, reaching for his pack tucked into the crash webbing along the bulkhead and rooting around for clean clothing. “Factor in that they are organic beings who get frustrated and impatient. There’s a good chance they will just have left. Richer pastures, and all,” he pulls on the trousers and shirt, turns towards the fold out bunk, then pauses, mutters a curse, and walks back to the discarded clothes on the floor.

K whirs again as Cassian scoops the clothes off the floor and jams them into the tiny portable laundry sonic clumsily soldered into the shelves near the ‘fresher. He had added that cheap appliance some time back, when the Alliance sent him off on a wild tauntaun chase through the galaxy and he realized he would have to live out of a small troop transport for weeks or months at a time. The little box hummed as he slapped it on, and normally he would wait the ten minutes needed to pull the clean clothes out and stow them properly, but he’s just…he won’t make it awake that long. He doesn’t want to stay awake that long. He just wants to pass out and wake up to a world where he wasn’t injured, a world where he hadn’t failed at every possible attempt to find the man who might destroy the galaxy.

“I have adjusted,” Kay announces as Cassian trudges back to the bunk and pulls himself painstakingly onto the thin mattress. “Some calculations have lowered.”

“Good,” Cassian rolls onto his back and throws his good arm over his eyes. “What are the odds now?”

“Eighty-eight percent chance that we will be immediately pursued and attacked.”

“Kay,” Cassian groans, because he’s really not in the mood for jokes. “I told you to factor in frustration and impatience.”

Kay turns and walks back into the cockpit, the co-pilot chair creaking as he re-settles his metal bulk on it again. “Yes. And the odds we will be immediately pursued and attacked are eighty-eight percent. The odds that _you_ will come to your senses and make the tactically sound decision to remain hidden longer are much lower.”

Cassian peers at Kay from underneath his arm, but his friend doesn’t turn around, absorbed in something on the console instead. Over his black shoulder, the blood moon hangs squarely in the middle of the viewscreen, like a great red eye glowering at him from the inky sky. Cassian glowers back.

Just barely within his line of sight, the dark branches of the edge of the forest rise over the bottom edge of the viewscreen. For a moment, he thinks he sees a flash of light within the trees, but he blinks and it’s gone, probably nothing more than his tired eyes playing tricks on him.

Distantly, something roars.

“Multiple life forms in the vicinity,” Kay says.

Cassian tenses.

“They appear to be moving away from us at a significant speed.”

He lets his head drop back, his arm slip down over his eyes again. “Twenty four hours,” he says, and the last of the anger burns itself to embers, and then ash. It’s done. She’s gone. He’s lost everything all over again, and he isn’t even sure what “everything” was.

“Twenty four hours,” Kay repeats dutifully. “I will be ready.”

Cassian is asleep before he finishes speaking.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up to purple waves roaring against the shoreline, a powerful wind whining around the U-Wing hull, and a throbbing headache.

Kay hands him the medkit from Mandalore, and he is still too tired to argue. He takes a mild painkiller for the headache, rubs a thin coat of bacta on the claw marks on his shoulder, and curses a few times as he tries to stuff everything back into the kit but can’t quite manage it. The bacta won’t fit under the bandages, the little square boxes of various pills nearly go tumbling to the deck, and that odd box with the old Mandalorian governor’s crest on it simply refuses to go back in anywhere. It seems this day is destined to be just as frustrating as the last. Cassian finally gives up, stuff what he can back in the box and leaves the rest piled on top.

The toolkit is marginally more amenable; at least he doesn’t drop the spanner on his toe or break the screwdrivers as he yanks open panels and avionics boxes around the U-Wing, relentlessly hunting for anything that looks out of place, anything that might be the illusive tracker device.

Nothing.

He works all day, Kay mostly silent at his side, practically ripping the ship apart and sticking it back together again.

Nothing.

Jyn doesn’t come back.

He doesn’t look out at the forest, or the cliff tops, or the heavy purple waves that smash against the pebbled shore. He barely looks outside at all. The tracker isn’t out there. The war isn’t out there.

There’s nothing for him, out there.

Cassian tears at the U-Wing, and counts the hours until he is gone.

It's all he can do.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Musa_ is the genus for bananas and plantains. 
> 
> In his defense, he's had a hell of a day.
> 
> In hers, she's had a hell of a life.


	7. search and rescue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *

 

 

That night he dreams of his father, standing on a white beach, the red ocean crashing around his ankles.

“Three true things,” his father says, except something’s off about his voice. Familiar, but off. His father takes a step farther into the red water, and keeps speaking. “Everything rots,” he says.

“Don’t,” Cassian watches the red creep higher on his father’s legs. “Don’t go out there.”

“Everything dies,” his father calls back, walking out into the waves. Cassian claws at his chest, at the crystal that should hang there, but it isn’t there, it isn’t there and that is wrong. It’s always there. _Don’t go, don’t go, don’t leave!_

Another step, and the man that looks like his father pauses, turns slightly back towards the shore. He’s up to his waist in red now. It’s not his father, though. It’s never been his father.

“The third true thing,” Cassian says over his shoulder as the waves lap at his shoulders. “I can never remember the third thing.”

“I forget that one too,” Jyn says on the shore, looking back at him. “I forget it all the time _.”_

 

* * *

 

The wind dies down by the time the sun dips below the tops of the white cliffs, turning the red streaks in the white stone disturbingly dark. Old blood, Cassian thinks, or prison bars. He resolves not to look again. Five more hours until they leave. His muscles ache all over, his shoulder stiff from the cuts. Despite his exhaustion, he barely slept the night before, tossing and turning as he fell in and out of dark dreams of flashing blades, eyes glowing in the shadows, and a man walking into an ocean of blood.

He has no choice but to brush it off, refocus his attention on the task at hand. Five hours until they run out of time and he needs to find another way back to the Alliance.

Still no tracker.

The nearby forest remains empty. He resolves not to look there, either. (She’s not coming back. He doesn’t want her to come back. It’s easier if she doesn’t come back.)

Kay has almost completely dismantled the flight console in the cockpit. “I have run scans on every piece of hardware within this assembly. Everything is factory standard. Except, of course,” he adds casually, “the missing atmospheric hyperjump regulator that we removed last month.”

Cassian sits in the cargo bay and scrapes his fingers through his beard. He needs to trim this soon, it’s getting ragged again. “Where did we put that thing, anyway?”

“We left it in the maintenance bay spare parts locker,” Kay reminds him. “The hangar chief was angry at you for violating safety regulations.”

“It’s perfectly safe to jump from atmo, if you’re not worried about drawing attention,” Cassian shakes his head and lets his eyes roam over the interior of the U-Wing for the thousandth time, hoping that something will finally jump out at him and he will find the fucking tracker that pins him here on this beach. “You just have to do a few extra calculations.”

“That’s what _I_ told her,” Kay says, aggrieved.

Cassian catches himself staring out the open cargo door, watching the tree line, and jerks to his feet, turning his back on the scene and reaching for the discarded screwdriver on the bench. “Put the console back together. I’m going to pry open the external avionics bay and run another scan in there.”

“Clean out the sand while you’re there,” Kay calls after him. “We will be hauling half this beach with us when we leave.”

Cassian waves a hand in acknowledgement and slips out the door, carefully ignoring the dark trees.

Four hours left.

No tracker.

They put the console back together and run another software scan, in case the tracker is a program and not a device. Nothing.

Three hours.

Kay pries up every floor panel, checking the shallow depression between the deck plates and the upper casing of the hull. Nothing but handfuls of red and white sand. He hammers the plates back into place with his metal fist, some of them denting slightly under the force. Cassian makes a mental note to watch where he steps with bare feet in here.

They tear the ship apart and put it back together again, even going so far as to open the maintenance panels leading into the hyperdrive bay. It’s dangerous to do this in such a sandy place, where grit might fall into the drive and potentially alter all their variables to a deadly degree. But there is no other choice.

The hyperdrive bay is as clear of non-standard equipment as the rest of the ship. Cassian waits until they’ve resealed the doors to slam the side of his fist into the outer hull.

“That,” Kay tells him, “was entirely pointless.”

Over his shoulder, Cassian can see a few beams of sunlight breaking through the dark branches of the forest. He turns away, his throat tight.

Two hours left.

One.

“Ready for engine start,” Kay says from the cockpit. “On your order.”

Cassian stands by the open cargo hatch, staring out at the purple ocean. Both moons are up tonight, the larger red moon sailing serenely over the sea, the smaller yellow one only just peeking over the tops of the trees. He’s watching the red moon, trying to ignore the yellow. Trying to ignore the way the moonlight gives the dark sea a reddish cast. He’s leaving. He doesn’t need to worry about oceans of blood or men who look like his father walking into the thick waves. He doesn’t have to care about kyber mysteries and lost names.

He’s probably wrong about her identity anyway. Gerrera has probably relocated several people by this point. The Empire has destroyed plenty of families. What are the odds that he would find _this_ family on _this_ planet at _this_ time? What are the odds that they would even be able to help him, if it _was_ the right family?

(What are the odds that she would go with him, anyway? It was never going to happen.)

“I think this is a bad idea,” Kay adds. “But we have reached twenty-four hours.”

“Right,” Cassian looks at the blood moon over the dark sea, and refuses to check the forest again. She hasn’t been there all day. She won’t be there now.

“Our initial jump is programmed,” Kay says. “The bounty hunters will probably find us as soon as we leave Dathomir’s distortionary field.”

“If we jump still in atmo,” Cassian replies absently, “they might not pick us up before we’re out of range.”

“We don’t know their range.” Kay’s voice box takes on a hint of petulance, then clears before Cassian can comment on it. “Ready for engine start.”

He opens his mouth to give the order.

Something gleams in the trees, a flash of low light so brief he thinks he might have imagined it.

His skin prickles, tension crackling down his spine like lightning.

It’s nothing, he thinks savagely. Nothing. His imagination. Not important even if it isn’t.

“Cassian,” Kay says from the cockpit. “I am ready for engine start up.”

“Standby,” Cassian snaps, and jumps down to the pebbly beach. Behind him, Kay whirrs, and Cassian feels an exasperation sweep through him, but it’s too late, he’s committed. He’s just going to look around for a moment, find out what that flash of light was so close to his ship, and then they are gone. He has work to do.

But first, he just needs to…check.

 

* * *

 

Kay follows him into the trees, his heavy footsteps crunching over the pebbles and leaving a distinct trail behind him. In retrospect, Cassian is glad that Kay didn’t join them in the hunt for the stenorel. His noise probably would have drawn every stenorel and rancor and any other carnivorous horror-beast this planet can dream up.

“Scanning for life forms,” Kay announces as they push into the forest, Cassian trying grimly not to look for the exact spot he had stood with Jyn last night. Kay’s optics suddenly increase to maximum brightness, throwing two brilliant light spots out into the shadows. Nothing moves, save a few branches swaying in the light ocean breeze. “No life forms detected,” Kay concludes a moment later. “Are we looking for life forms?”

“No.” Cassian pauses, shakes his head. “Yes. Maybe.”

 _Not life forms, plural, anyway,_ he thinks with a tinge of regret.

Kay whirrs again. “She’s not here.”

Cassian sighs. “I know. Let’s go back to the - ”

Something shimmers in the corner of his eye, and he whirls around, his heart leaping up in his chest. Nothing moves, and he squints into the darkness, stepping forward with one hand outstretched. If she’s hiding – but that doesn’t seem like her, to hide when she’s already caught, and –

The shimmer again!

“Kay, over here,” he calls, and his friend obligingly swings his gaze around to flood the area in front of Cassian with light.

There’s a large broken branch on the ground right in front of him, and some of the nearby red-tipped bushes have lost all their crimson flowers, a shower of them scattered around the fallen branch. But what catches his attention is neither branch nor leaves nor the raked-up earth around both, but a single object swinging lightly from within the nearest bush.

Cassian reaches into the leaves and wraps his hand around the kyber crystal that hangs precariously from the snapped twigs. It warms to his touch immediately, a faint haze of rainbow colors misting around his fingers. Cassian lifts it up to Kay’s lights, staring at the braided cord.

It’s snapped in two.

“It appears,” Kay says after a moment of stunned silence, “that something has happened to Jyn.”

 

* * *

 

He is not panicking. He has dealt with crises before. He has been specifically trained to handle high-stress situations. He is going to do a thorough search of the area, come up with a reasonable game plan, and proceed with all due caution.

“Remember the multiple life forms I detected last night?” Kay says suddenly, as Cassian knots the cord back together again and slips it over his head. “It was in this general area. That’s probably when she was attacked.”

Twenty-four hours ago, barely ten minutes after he left her.

“Kay,” Cassian says quietly. “Scan for blood.”

He left her, and something, several somethings, jumped her.

“Scanning.”

He left her and now she was –

“There is a significant deposit of what reads as Human blood,” Kay says. “Two meters that way.”

He sees it only after careful search and a few directions from Kay – several thin streaks of dark blood painted across the broader leaves of the bushes and against the bark of a few trees.

Cassian reaches up and tucks the kyber under his shirt, against his skin.

“We are going to find her, aren’t we?” Kay’s optics shine like a lighthouse in a storm, but Cassian isn’t looking for safe harbor right now, so he turns his back and peers out into the night. The crystal is warm on his skin, hard edges digging into his collarbone. He looks out into the forest and takes a long, slow breath, and collapses his attention inward. He shuts out the chill of the night air, the rhythmic rush of the ocean, the faint rustle of leaves. He shuts off the stream of images running through his mind – Jyn watching him walk into the U-Wing and then turning to find herself facing an enemy, Jyn fighting for her life as he lay on the bunk not twenty meters away and felt sorry for himself, Jyn bleeding as something dragged her away – he shuts it off. The fear, the anger, the regret, the ugly whisper underneath it all (the Alliance needs him and she doesn’t) – all of it, shut down and shut off.

The crystal digs into his collarbone. His heart rate slows. His lungs fill with crisp night air.

There is blood on the trees and broken earth by his boots, leading off into the north.

“Kay,” Cassian says, opening his eyes. His voice is flat, cold. “In the event that we encounter enemies, you are authorized to kill.”

“Understood,” Kay replies. “The probability that Jyn is still alive - ”

“Is irrelevant. I need you on a half-kilometer tether. Keep a tag on me as we move. If I stop, you stop, unless you detect blaster fire, in which case, rejoin immediately.”

“Excellent,” Kay whirs briefly. “I will arrive just in time to collect your corpse.”

“Unless you have acquired a stealth mode recently,” Cassian pulls his blaster out and checks that the ammo pack is at full charge. “Then you need to stay behind me.”

“Very well.”

Cassian reaches up and touches the crystal under his shirt. “Lights off,” he orders, and waits until the darkness envelopes them both.

“How will you - ”

Cassian snaps his extended barrel and extra mag onto the blaster, locking it into rifle configuration. The sound echoes in the trees and cuts Kay off. “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

He will never, later in the bright light of day or the glitter of city lights, be able to explain what happens that night, how he walks through the near-pitch darkness of the forest of witches and never stumbles. He will never be able to explain how he moves in an almost perfectly straight line, unerringly to the north, and never once doubts his path.

He will never understand it, and he won’t try.

He doesn’t try now, either. He just walks.

The crystal burns against his chest, and he walks.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t know how long it takes, but the red moon is sinking below the trees and the yellow moon arching high overhead when he finds her.

The crystal does not move on his chest under his shirt, but he is suddenly acutely aware of the edges of it, digging hard into his skin and bone. He stops immediately, but before he can reach up and adjust it, he hears the murmur of voices coming from around a stack of irregular grey boulders nearby, overgrown with red and yellow lichen, and a few tall, thick red bushes sprout from cracks in the tops, so that they appear to be on fire.

Cassian slips closer, hunts along the boulders until he finds the gentle depressions and crags in the stone that will give him a path to the top. He pulls himself up, moving painfully slow to avoid making scraping noises or dislodging pebbles. When he reaches the top, he crawls on his belly, taking care to stay under the broad red leaves of the plants. In the shadows of the night, he knows he is probably invisible to anyone on the ground, but anyone with an elevated viewpoint might pick him up if he’s not very careful.

He gets his rifle positioned before him and flips on the night vision scope. It takes his eyes a second to adjust to the new perspective, and then he sees everything happening in the small clearing below him.

Jyn is on her knees, bound to a short post that has been driven into the ground. Her hands are behind her, and he can see ropes twisting from her wrists and ankles to the post. There is blood on her lips, a dark trickle down the left side of her head, and her embroidered cloak is gone, exposing scrapes and bruises all down her bare arms. The same smudged, broken pattern of painted marks on her skin tells him that she hasn’t been able to wash them off from the stenorel fight. She hasn’t been home. She’s been here, with these people, bound to that stake, since he left her in the forest.

His stomach clenches, but he takes a long, slow, shallow breath and directs his attention to the scene. Seven – no, eight – enemy contacts stand around Jyn in a sloppy circle. Human, female presenting, ranging in ages from young adults to middle aged, all of them covered in blue and black body markings. Two of them hold dim torches that make his night-vision scope whine slightly as it compensates for the flare. He marks eight daggers, two thick wooden clubs, a spear, five carved wooden staffs, and one metal sword. One of the women standing nearest to Jyn is holding Jyn's bone-handled dagger in one hand, idly playing with it. Another woman looms over their prisoner, holding her sword over Jyn’s head. This one is more heavily marked than the rest, a flow of sharp-edged shapes cascading down her face and disappearing down the front of her thick tunic. When Cassian focuses his scope on the blade, he can make out faint grooves in the metal. The tattooed woman draws the tips of her fingers reverently down the grooves as he watches, caressing it as she waves it gently over Jyn’s bared neck.

 _Scissorfists,_ Jyn sneers in his memory. _Slampa_ _who steal fish even when their own caches are full and worship their stupid grooved blades._

The sword-bearer says something to Jyn, who merely looks at her with a stony expression.

Cassian twists his arm behind his back and fumbles with the small case attached to his belt. Spare scope, ammo pack, and – there it is. Portable blastgun microphone. He eases the small tube-shaped device out of the case and checks it briefly for damage. It’s one of the poorer sound-scopes available on the market, but it works fine for shorter distances or places with low background noise. This one is older, but he’s maintained it well. He clips it to his rifle, on the bottom of the barrel. It alters the weight and pull of the weapon, but Cassian has trained with every possible configuration of this blaster until he could assemble and fire it with reasonable accuracy in seconds if he woke up from a dead sleep.

He slips his comm receiver into his left ear, and tunes the sound-scope to the earpiece. He pauses a moment, a thought occurring to him, and fishes around in his inner jacket pocket before he finds his backup comm. When he gets to Jyn, he can give her that one, and then even if they are separated, they won’t be cut off from one another. He tunes the spare comm to his frequencies, and sets it aside. Then it’s just a matter of powering up the sound-scope and aiming his rifle again at the people below.

It’s clear to him that the sword-bearing leader has been interrogating Jyn, and to no effect. Frustration twists her features into something unpleasant. His sound-scope crackles online just as she raises the sword and makes a dramatic sweeping motion that seems to be some kind of signal. “ – our Mothers decree,” he catches, the leader’s voice solemn but with a hint of smug satisfaction that makes his teeth clench. The other seven enemy contacts raise their hoods to obscure their faces and move closer, collectively dropping to one knee. Only the leader remains standing. With the hooded women kneeling in a rough circle around her, her limbs bound and a sword over her head, Jyn looks like a sacrifice in an old holovid about ‘savage’ tribes. The torches flicker out abruptly, which makes Cassian’s night vision scope whine softly as it readjusts to the new darkness.

The seven kneeling women begin to hum, a low, unsettling tune that makes his sound-scope buzz and his bones resonate.

Jyn’s eyes widen, her shoulders go rigid, and then she wipes her face clean of all fear, her eyes turning distant. He knows that look. She has closed herself off, retreated to somewhere strong within her mind in preparation for an oncoming siege. That is the look of someone preparing to resist torture.

Cassian’s throat tightens and his heart speeds up, but that is dangerous, that will make his fingers slick and tense on the trigger, his aim pull off-target, so he divorces himself from it. He puts away the fear and the personal connection, excises the context of the scene below him. He is watching eight targets surrounding his objective. If he acts now, he may compromise his objective. Preferred course of action is observation, analysis, reaction.

The leader holds her grooved sword to her forehead, bowing against the metal.

His objective merely looks up at her, face grim.

The leader lowers the sword and stretches out her empty hand toward his objective’s face. “You have trespassed in Scissorfist territory,” she intones. “Yes or no?”

His objective does not speak. The leader flicks her fingers, and for some reason, she flinches.

“You have discovered an offworlder,” the leader continues. “Yes or no?”

His objective does not speak. Another flick, another flinch.

He switches to infrared on his scope. The trees around the clearing are free of life forms. The only enemy contacts are the eight in the circle. K2SO is probably still half a klick behind him, and will arrive in roughly thirty seconds following the first blaster shot. The kneeling enemy contacts are lined up neatly, each within a meter of the next. Possible course of action: he clears at least three of the hummers before the rest react, scatter, reform to attack. The only long range weapon is the spear. He has the advantage of night cover and the NV scope, he will shoot at least three more before the long-range threat can reach him. He can climb down the back of the boulder before the short-range threats can get close, and shoot in close quarters as they come around the boulder. Kay will arrive within an acceptable period of time, further reducing his risk.

The living enemies might kill the objective while he moves. Unacceptable risk. He discards the course of action.

Something is digging into his collarbone. Irrelevant.

“You left the man unclaimed,” the leader says loudly in his sound-scope. “Yes or no?” She flicks her fingers, hard. His objective closes her eyes, strain beginning to show around her jawline.

The humming intensifies, he can now hear it outside of the scope, and the dissonance between the tune in his earpiece and the tune surrounding him is jarring. It tears at the edges of his detachment, threatening to drag him back into himself, back to the fear and the anger. Back to the man who knows the woman fighting for her life in the ring below.

No.

He refocuses, listens only to the earpiece. The humming is just noise, through the filter of the electronics.

Possible course of action: he shoots the leader, clears at least one more enemy before the rest react. Drop from the boulder and into the clearing, rifle on automatic mode. He will have five seconds of continuous fire before the ammo pack runs dry. He will potentially clear four more enemies with the rifle before forced to engage in hand-to-hand with the rest. He gets to the objective, cuts her free; she will arm herself and aid in their mutual escape.

The living enemies might take the objective hostage to stop his fire. Unacceptable risk. He discards the course of action.

The leader steps closer to his objective, looming over her. “You have gained the offworlder’s trust,” she snarls, “He will follow where you lead. _Yes or no?”_

Her outstretched hand curls in the air, and J- _his objective_ bows her head, shoulders hunching against some invisible weight. The leader’s fingers claw at the air over her head, and then abruptly relax as she withdraws.

The humming dies.

His objective takes a deep breath, slumps.

Possible course of action: he switches to automatic mode right now and shoots every one of these bastards, regardless of how many spears they chuck at him.

Stray blaster fire may strike her. Unacceptable risk.

“Your mothers have trained you well, Blue Coral,” the leader says, a little breathlessly. Whatever she has been doing, it is wearing her out too. He adds this to his calculations. “I had not thought to need this, but we have a bargain to fulfill, and you have blocked us long enough.”

“I still say we should just kill the offworlder,” one of the women still kneeling mutters, low enough that the sound-scope barely registers it. The leader spins around and levels her swordpoint at the dissenter.

“We swore an oath, Sister,” she says fiercely. “And Scissorfists do not break oaths. The offworlder will be taken alive and with no harm to his mind.”

The implication of those words batter against his detachment. _Typical Imp bounties require the subject alive, all mental faculties intact._

The Scissorfists are working with the bounty hunter, and they took J- took his contact on planet as a means of drawing him out safely.

Possible course of action: he pulls his tactical vibroblade and – no.

Breathe.

Detach.

The leader raises her grooved sword. The kneeling enemies begin to hum again, this time a faster, throbbing tune that seems to trickle through the thin veins still attaching him to his body. The song builds, faster, louder, faster, louder, the stone beneath him and the air within him beating in time to the strange rhythm. It is not his bones that thrum with this melody but his blood, surging through his heart like a heartbeat. He tries to pull away from it, but it is inside him, singing through his skin and his muscles and his mind. _The truth,_ the song whispers, _the truth, tell us the truth, the truth,_ and he is aware suddenly of his heart hammering in his chest so hard he fears his ribs may crack under the onslaught, his skin split, his blood spill onto the rock, _the truth, tell us the truth_.

“Daughter of Blue Coral,” the woman with the sword calls over the throbbing song, “Daughter of your Mothers, blooded and known,” she brings the sword up sharply over his objective’s head.  _“Tell us your truth!”_

The sword flashes bright in his scope; he sees the blade slice across Jyn’s chest, a long  line that cuts from shoulder to shoulder and spills dark blood down her shirt and into the grooves of the blade.

Jyn screams, a short, furious shout of pain and rage, and jerks under the onslaught.

Cassian fires.

The bolt goes through the leader’s right ear, and she drops without a sound.

For a terrible, weightless, silent moment, the world is perfectly still.

Somewhere in the back of his head, a countdown begins. _Thirty seconds._

The kneeling women leap to their feet, dark cloaks swirling in his vision, obscuring their heads and bodies in a confusing maelstrom of formless shadows. He inhales, aims, fires – a shape drops to the ground, inhale, aim, fire, another down, but then brilliant light ignites in his scope. The scope whines and tries to adjust for the plume of orange fire that flares up from one of the shapes – the spear, he has time to think, this spear is like Jyn’s spear, glowing with strange unknown light – but Cassian doesn’t stay to watch. He throws himself back, slipping and sliding down the back of the rock, ignoring the sting in his fingers and his knee that scrapes off a few patches of his skin as he goes. A shrill ululating call tears apart the night behind him, five high voices screaming for his blood. Cassian hits the ground on his knees and scrambles to bring his rifle up.

His vision is still poor, but the night vision scope was low-intensity enough that he can still see the trees around him, the boulder to his back, and the two flowing dark shapes that appear like mist on either side. Cassian snaps a shot to the left – the figure jerks and spins but doesn’t fall – but he’s only halfway turned when the figure on the right reaches him. He hears the whistle of a club through the air and throws the rifle up between his body and the incoming blow. The club hits the solid metal of his rifle casing with a _crack_ , the impact jolting up his arms and shoulders. Cassian absorbs the blow and angles his rifle down, letting the club slide to his left, the attacker’s momentum carrying her down after it. She stumbles, and Cassian steps to the side and back, swinging to let her fall. She recovers, but before she can straighten and lunge for him again, he backhands her with his fist.

Something clamps down around his neck from behind, harsh breathing in his ear, and Cassian bends his knees and twists within the hold. His throat burns and his chest aches from the lack of air. He slams his elbow down and back, feels his bone connect with ribs, adjusts his aim, slams it again. This time he hits the softer spot under the ribcage, feels his attacker gasp and drop back.

The first attacker is already recovering, but Cassian doesn’t wait for her onslaught. He bolts through the narrow gap between the wheezing attacker and the boulder, and skids in the dark earth as he rounds the corner.

A hoarse shout from nearby, _“Here!”_ It's Jyn, her silhouette a few steps away, straining against her bonds towards him. He turns and -

All the air rushes out of his lungs, he registers the blow to his gut a moment before the pain ricochets through his body, and he barely gets his hands up in time to block the follow-on blow from the hooded figure before him. She flies forward, the glint of metal in her hand, and Cassian snaps his hands out and catches her wrist before she buries the knife in his heart. The pale yellow moonlight shivers on the blade, and he sees a carved-bone hilt in her painted hand. He twists, sidesteps, yanking her between his body and the two other dark shapes that dart toward him. She leaps up from the ground and plants her feet on his chest, launching herself away from him and tearing her wrist free of his grasp. Cassian gasps again as the heavy blow knocks him back, but even as he fights to get air into his abused body, he feels a faint sense of satisfaction, his fingers still curled tight around a bone-handled knife.

He sees another cloak moving toward him, another knife flashing in the dim light toward his face, and he stops trying to catch himself as he falls and crashes back to the dirt. The knife whistles as it parts the air over his face, singing for his blood. He feels his shoulder blades hit the hard ground and rolls his legs up, kicking out with both feet. His left leg clips something curved, but his right foot smacks squarely against flesh and sends the nearest cloaked figure flailing backwards.

Something cups the back of his head, and Cassian wrenches himself over, rising to his hands and knees. He has just enough time to think _something behind me_ and _Jyn_ before Jyn throws herself awkwardly up to her feet and smashes her shoulder against a cloaked attacker aiming a fist at Cassian’s exposed lower back. The ropes jerk Jyn back to the dirt, and she lands in a graceless, furious heap at his feet, but the attacker stumbles to the ground next to Cassian.

He lashes out with the bone knife, and feels the blade catch, feels a hot spray across his knuckles. He ignores it, extends his reach, and the blade slices through the ropes holding Jyn’s wrists and ankles to the post.

She explodes forward, ramming into him and plowing both of them into the dirt.

A flash of orange light streaks over her head, striking like lightning against the post and quivering. The light dies, and he blinks against the after-image of a glowing spear in the night. There’s no time to think about it, though, Jyn is already rolling them both aside and scrambling up. Cassian slaps the bone knife into her hand as he brings his rifle back around.

The moment his skin touches hers, the crystal around his neck lights up in a brilliant beacon of white light, and Cassian feels a cascade of sparks shiver up his arm and into his bruised chest, his shuddering lungs. Time slows, the fight pauses, his hurts fade and Jyn’s hand is tight in his, their fingers grasped tight around the carved bone. The Dathomiri around them stumble back, momentarily thrown off guard by the blinding display. The light throws Jyn’s eyes into sharp green relief, and in that moment she looks up at him, her mouth curved into a small but delighted smile, and Cassian is…he is…

He could stay here, in this light, feeling this rush of warmth and safety and _rightness_.

He could –

The light goes out, his body aches like he’s been kicked in the chest, and Jyn runs past him, her knife raised high. Cassian spins and drops to one knee, bringing his rifle up to bear on the descending shadows that flow towards them like an amorphous nightmare in the darkness.

Kay rams directly into the middle of them like a speeding grav-bus. Jyn skids to a halt and Cassian stills his finger on the trigger, watching as bodies go flying through the air. Kay’s optic lights flicker on a moment later, two blinding white beams directly into the face of the nearest Dathomiri, who screams and throws herself backward, shielding her face with her arms. Kay plucks her off the ground by the shirt front and throws her against the ground.

“Hello,” Kay says loudly, watching a Dathomiri leap into the air and fly down at him, her club raised. “I am glad you are not dead,” he tells Jyn, snapping out an arm and catching the attacker across the throat with his metal wrist. She flips gracelessly around his arm, gagging, and crashes to the earth in a motionless heap. “I would like it noted for the record, that situations like this – “

“- would be resolved much quicker if you had a blaster,” Cassian completes, firing over Jyn’s shoulder. The first shape drops, and Jyn throws out her arm and catches the second in the face with a hard elbow. The woman falls with a groan, and Jyn drops to her knees and plunges the bone dagger down.

The clearing is suddenly very still, and silent save for two sets of harsh breathing and the faint whirr of a processor. Kay’s optic lights dim to pale white, blink blue for a moment, and then turn white again. “Scans indicate that you are in terrible condition,” he says.

Jyn looks at him, her head tilted to the side. “Thanks,” she says at last.

“It was not meant as a compliment.”

“Jyn,” Cassian starts, but the rest of what he means to say evaporates in his throat because she’s bleeding, because she’s been held captive for a day and a night and it’s his fault, because she’s _here_ –

“You came back for me,” Jyn says into the silence.

Cassian swallows, nods, not entirely sure if she can see the movement but not able to say anything else.

Kay looks from her to Cassian, still kneeling in the dirt. “You’re welcome," he says.

Jyn steps closer, and Cassian forces himself to his feet, letting his rifle barrel droop to point at the ground. She looks at him in the dim moonlight, her voice wondering. “You’re still here.”

She’s close enough that he could touch her, if he reached out. He can barely see her outline in the dim yellow moonlight, though. Between the glowing spear and Kay’s headlights, Cassian’s night vision has degraded significantly, and won’t come back for several minutes.

Unless…

Slowly, making sure she can see his hand moving, he reaches up and traces his fingertips along her cheekbone.

The crystal around his neck illuminates the space between them, a soft, content white light shot through with a miasma of shifting colors.

Jyn stares at the crystal, then before he can react, she slips close and presses her palm over the stone. Her fingers rest against the exposed hollow of his throat, she’s so close he can see the smudged dried blood around her lower lip, and when he lets his rifle hang from the strap on his shoulder and lifts his free hand, he can feel the bump on the side of her head where a shallow cut bleeds sluggishly into her hair. She’s a mess, bruised and bloodied and clearly exhausted, but she looks up at him with that same gentle, surprised smile from before, and Cassian wants to gather her close and shield her from the world, while knowing that he would never need to.

“You came back,” she whispers again.

Cassian smiles at her, a lopsided, uncertain thing that he’s sure makes him look idiotic but he can’t seem to stop, either.

“You are glowing,” Kay says from the side. “That is unusual.”

Jyn blinks. “A calling,” she says reluctantly, and pulls back. The crystal fades out, and Cassian blinks before his brain catches up to him. He fumbles the leather cord over his head and holds it out to Jyn, who hesitates, and then bows her head toward him.

Cassian slips the necklace over her head, careful not to brush against the cut or her bleeding lip.

“If it’s of any interest to you,” Kay tells them conversationally, “a small ship is inbound to this position. It appears to be the same ship that followed us to this planet.”

The realization hits Cassian like a bucket of cold water, and Jyn spins on her heel immediately. “The bounty hunter!”

“Given their trajectory and speed, ETA is approximately three minutes, twenty-two seconds. I suggest that you –“

 _“Run!”_ Cassian grabs Jyn hand and bolts towards the trees. She falls in step with him immediately, and when they reach the trees, she pulls ahead, guiding him through the dark trunks and around the thicker brush. They don’t waste time trying to stay silent; it’s pointless with Kay crashing through the forest behind them.

Jyn tugs him left, and he follows, pushing aside the ache in his sides and concentrating on where his feet fall on the uneven ground, on keeping his breathing even and deep.

Distantly, he hears the roar of a small-craft engine.

“Your ship,” Jyn grunts between harsh breaths, darting around a massive fallen tree and tugging him deftly through a narrow gap in giant bushes that sway in the night wind. “They’ll reach us - at your ship.”

“No,” he manages, but he has to keep his breath for running, so he doesn’t speak further.

Jyn, however, doesn’t seem to have that problem. “They _will,_ ” she growls at him, and ducks under a low branch. Cassian manages to avoid the heavy wooden obstacle too, but the move knocks him a little off his rhythm. Wait, where are they even going? Is this the fastest route back to the U-Wing? Should they even go to the U-Wing? Is there some place Jyn knows that they can bunker down until the bounty hunter leaves?

“I can – slow them down,” she tells him. “You can – jump to – hyperspace.”

He finds the air to snap, _“No.”_ But in his chest, his pounding heart stutters, because he knows, he _knows -_

“Have to – get back,” she says, and the engines are definitely closer now, thunder rolling in on their heels and shattering the night.

 _Dawn,_ he thinks absently, noting for the first time that the darkness of the night has begun to fade into deep grey, the fiery red and yellow of the bushes around him flickering into his vision like new fires beginning to catch.

The rest of his attention, of course, is absorbed in the sick, hateful recognition that Jyn is right.

He has been on this planet for days, out of communication with the Alliance, possibly not even sending back reassuring standby messages from his dead man’s switch. They might think him dead, or captured, they might be scrambling to fill the holes his absence has left, they might even be under attack at this very moment by the weapon he’s hunting down. He has been isolated from the war, here on Dathomir, but that does not mean the war has stopped to wait for him.

“The probability that Jyn will be able to stop a bounty hunter ship is low,” Kay says from a few steps behind them.

Something snaps bright in Jyn’s hand, an orange glow surrounding the improbable blade of a spear. “Cuts through – lightspeed rated – metal hulls,” she tells them. Her grip on Cassian’s hand tightens.

Cassian follows her around a tree trunk, picking his steps carefully as they fly over the tangled roots exposed in the forest floor, and wonders when she pulled that spear from the post.

“Oh,” Kay says. “That might work.”

 Jyn shoots him a wicked grin over her shoulder, teeth bloody and eyes alight.

He can’t do this. He can’t leave her to face his enemies while he runs for safety.

In Rebel Intel’s files, Cassian is listed as a High-Value Asset, Class Five. In the cold calculus of a desperate war, he is worth the sacrifice of five battalions, or the logistical equivalent.

He _can’t._

In the files that only six people in the galaxy are cleared to even know exist, Cassian is listed as a Class Seven. Fulcrum. The Alliance would sacrifice an entire Fleet to save him, if Command thought it possible. At this moment, he has information regarding the potential family of Galen Erso, their only connection to a weapons’ program that threatens to subjugate the galaxy beyond any hope.

Anger and terror and a horrible, choking sorrow swell inside his chest. He has to leave. He can’t stay and fight a potentially superior force, he can’t turn aside a viable option to escape.

He can’t breathe. He can’t –

“Behind!” Jyn breathes, “The ship!”

He throws a glance over his shoulder, and sees the rounded grey hull rising over the trees, bearing down on them like a storm.

“Cassian!” He snaps his attention forward, to Jyn’s hand, to her face, to the fiery orange glow of the spear as it ignites. Jyn rips her hand from his grasp and skids to a stop, facing the oncoming ship. _“Go!”_

He can’t do this.

Kay barrels past her, past them both, breaking a path through the scrub towards the U-Wing. Through the thinning trees, he can just see the rolling dark purple waves and the white pebbled beach.

Jyn tenses, raises the spear. “Cassian,” she yells over the crescendo of the oncoming engine. The craft is so low that a downdraft funnels down into the trees, whipping the smaller branches into a frenzy and her tangled hair into a dark halo around her pale face. Jyn stands in the maelstrom and brandishes her spear, blood on her skin and fire in her eyes, and Cassian knows in his core that he will never forgive himself for this.

“May the Force be with you,” Jyn says, or sings, or screams, he will never be able to decide, later when he remembers this moment. She doesn’t wait for him to answer; she turns her back on him, and bolts. Her momentum carries her up the slanted angle of a fallen tree, and she leaps from the high end to an overhanging branch, launching herself ever higher as the spear burns in her hands.

A heavy metal hand grabs Cassian’s jacket and hauls him back, and he stumbles but follows Kay out to the beach.

The U-Wing breaks into view a few desperate steps later. Cassian forces himself to run for it, following Kay over the red-streaked stones.

Behind him, a laser cannon booms, and then –

\- a horrific screech of rending metal –

\- the whine of engines overextending against some opposing force –

\- the ground trembles beneath his feet and he feels the pressure of a great wave between his shoulder blades, bearing down on him –

\- and then the shock wave hits, knocking him off his feet and throwing him to the heaving ground. A hail of white stones pummels his back and his arms, thrown up around his head at the last moment, and clatter against the side of the nearby U-Wing.

Abruptly, the stones stop falling, the ground stills, and though his ears are ringing, Cassian realizes that there is nothing but the soft crash of ocean waves and the uneven rasp of his breathing.

“Well,” Kay says from a few feet away, pebbles clinking as they tumble from his head and shoulders. “That was unexpected.”

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cassian’s long-range spy microphone that clips to his rifle (the “sound-scope”) isn’t a real thing, but it is based on [shotgun microphones](https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-how-do-shotgun-mics-work). His version is just smaller, lighter, more powerful, and can tune to his earpiece. Star Wars space magic tech!
> 
> Cassian calculates that Kay will arrive from half a kilometer away in 30 seconds because: the fastest human alive (Usain Bolt) has a top speed of 44.72 km/hr, which means he travels at approximately a speed of 0.75 km/minute. [KX droids were designed to mimic human athletes](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/KX-series_security_droid), but with exaggerated proportions, such as longer legs. So I increased his speed to 1km/minute, thus, 0.5 km = 30 seconds. Granted, Dathomir’s forest isn’t a smooth racetrack, but then, Kay is made of reinforced metal. He doesn’t need to go _around_ the bushes. 
> 
> Yes, I know they got back to the U-Wing much too fast. What can I say, I am both master and servant to The Drama.


	8. truth and trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *

 

"Shush, my little one," his Mamá whispers against his hair as he cries on her shoulder, shivery from the nightmare, the bad smell lingering in his nose. (Later, he will know that smell intimately; for now, though, he is a small boy in a big family that loves him, and he does not know the smell of blood. That knowledge will come sometime later).

(but not much)

"Shush, shush," Mamá soothes, "only a dream, little one, only a bad dream."

"He was walking into the deep lake," Cassian tells her, closing his eyes and pushing his head against Mamá's strong fingers. His cousin Chiiko says he is getting too big to be petted and cuddled all the time, but Chiiko isn't here and Cassian is still shivery, and Mamá's hands are strong and safe. "He walked into the lake and he said the true things and it was scary, Mamá."

"Shush, shush," Mamá hums. "There is no lake, and no stranger. It was just a story, little one. Just a story, shush. And your Tío Arej is going to get a piece of my mind tomorrow, you watch. Everything is going to be fine. You understand?"

Cassian sniffles and nods, though he feels a little bad for getting Tío Arej in trouble. "I understand."

"Okay," she kisses his temple and scritches the top of his head the way he likes, although he takes care not to let Chiiko know that he likes it. He is _not_ a baby. He just likes scritches, that's all. It makes him feel much better, the bad dream melting in the warmth of Mamá's hug. "Shush, little one, and go back to sleep. Everything will be okay."

"Everything will be okay," he echoes, and for now, he believes it.

 

* * *

 

His second thought is, _I can never put any of this in my report_. There is just no way he can look Draven in the eye and say ‘Yes sir, she jumped up from the trees and attacked the Decimator with a burning spear.’ There is no way that he can get away with ‘we ran through a pitch-dark forest together and never hit so much as a branch.’ And he’s definitely not going to dare ‘I found her with a magic necklace.’ Draven would confine him in the med wards on the spot.

But Cassian’s first thought, when the rock and dust and roar of crashing metal finally stops and he can think coherently again, is - _she isn’t dead_.

He rolls over, shoves himself painfully to his feet, his boots slipping on the loose shale and pebbles. On the edge of the beach clearing, where the white and red sands begin to give way to the darker loam of the forest, smolders the wrecked VT-49 that has plagued him since Mandalore. The front stabilizers, two great knife points that thrust forward as if to stab the sky, are both snapped near the fuselage, and the front intake that sat between the blade-like wings has been melted in an irregular line slashed across the nose of the craft by something hot, something like a spear that glowed with arcane fire. The melted metal accounts for the crash; VT-49 engines are powerful but require enormous cooling, and in atmosphere they can get overheated quickly. The damaged intake sealed it off, causing a core meltdown in seconds.

The whole bow of the small troop carrier has crumpled under the impact with the rocky shore, tucked under itself and giving the angular ship an odd curved look. Small electrical fires burn all along the fuselage exterior, leaking pinkish smoke into the light grey sky of Dathomir’s dawn. The wings, however dented and torn, remain a strange gleaming silver in shards all around the shattered ship.

It’s a striking image, but Cassian barely registers it, peering up through the smoke and flames and wreckage with his heart twisting in his chest. _She’s alive, she is alive, Force help me, please, let her be alive._

“I hope,” Kay says from his side, white sand still cascading gently from his joints, “that you don’t want Cassian to eat this one, too.”

Cassian blinks against the acrid smoke, because… _what?_

And then he sees her, climbing over the bent spine of the wrecked ship, the spear dull in her hand but her eyes as bright and fierce as ever. Jyn stands on top of the ship like a warrior over her fallen enemy, like a hunter over a kill, and then she smiles.

“No,” she calls, her voice hoarse but distinctly cheerful. “It has a nasty bite, but it’s no brikka-fish.”

Cassian opens his mouth to say…something. He’s not entirely sure what, but she’s grinning down at him and she’s alive, she’s alive and wait she’s just _stabbed a starship_ out of the sky with a stick and he needs to say something. Anything.

Before he can figure out what that ‘anything’ may be, however, Jyn suddenly jolts around to something behind her, dropping the spear and pulling her bone-handled knife.

Cassian hears it a second later, the grinding of a hatch being forced open.

“Life forms detected,” Kay says mildly. “I suggest taking cover.”

“Jyn!” Cassian hisses, “here!”

She glances over her shoulder at him, still braced to fight whatever is coming from the other side of the broken ship. Cassian extends out his hand to her, shaking his head. “Here,” he repeats. “Take cover.”

She hesitates, and then whirls and drops down to him, taking his hand just as the grinding on the other side of the ship stops.

They turn and bolt for the U-Wing, Cassian lunging inside and snatching his spare blaster from the wall. He tosses it to Jyn and swings his battered rifle back up into his arms. He and Jyn take up position on either side of the hatch door, and Kay clomps past them both to the cockpit, clearly intent on spinning up the engine and getting them the hells out of here. Cassian spares just enough attention to approve of that course of action before turning his focus back outside.

A hail of green blasterfire rockets from the other side of the downed ship, spraying in a deadly pattern over the broken spine and leaving dozens of holes where Jyn had so recently stood. He checks her expression, and finds her watching him with a grim sort of gratitude.

There’s no time for any more communication, though, because the bounty hunters attack.

Two streams of green crossfire erupt from either end of the busted ship, and Cassian catches sight of two Human faces over the smoking barrel ends as he fires back once and then dives for cover. Across the open hatch, Jyn also has her back to the bulkhead, glaring over her shoulder. The crossfire is relentless, saturating the air and making it impossible to lean out and return fire. Worse, he can see an indistinct but definitely sentient shape moving through the dust and green light towards the hatch. She gets close enough for him to pick out large furry ears and deceptively fragile limbs – a Zygerrian bounty hunter, that was a new one – and then she opens fire with a heavy semi-automatic blaster. The scorching blasts sizzle and hiss against the hull of the U-Wing, not enough to break through but enough to heat the metal until it’s almost unbearable to lean against. Cassian inches to the side, further from the hatch, but his stomach drops as he realizes that she’s pushing him back to allow her friends clearance to push forward. These aren't competing hunters fighting for a chance to get the whole prize; this is a coordinated team. 

Jyn twists her arm and fires blindly out into the fray behind her own back, but has to yank her hand in hastily when yet another figure, this one Nautolan in profile through the haze, appears at the top of the crash and starts to fire downward, focused on Jyn’s spot.

If Cassian weren’t so busy trying to figure out a good return fire angle, he would curse, creatively. Four bounty hunters working together, just for him. Wonderful.

The U-Wing engines whine to life beneath their feet, and he knows it’s only been about ten seconds but it feels like an eternity, the bulkhead getting hot against his back and some of the steady blaster shots ricocheting perilously inside the U-Wing. One of them strikes his fold-out table and sends the medical kit perched there crashing to the floor; the impact makes the poorly-fit lid pop off and the contents spill across the deck plates.

Jyn’s head whips around to stare at the plethora of bandages, syringes, and bacta gels rolling by her boots, probably startled by the noise and movement so close to her. The stupid box with Mandalore’s gubernatorial crest fetches up against her boot as Kay finally lifts the U-Wing from the beach, wobbling under the multiple angled blaster fire. He slants the U-Wing toward the bounty hunters, trying to shield the engines underneath. Cassian grabs the crash webbing on the bulkhead and swings himself around the edge of the hatch, firing four quick shots.

Two go wide, the third clips the Zygerrian’s right shoulder, and the fourth strikes the Nautolan through the leg. She at least drops to one knee, shrieking, but the other three continue their assault without pause. The U-Wing slants again, straining to gain altitude at this uneven angle, and the jolt forces Cassian to claw at the webbing to stay inside the damn ship.

“Kay!” He shouts, “go higher! Higher, _go!”_

 _“No!”_ Jyn shrieks suddenly, and Cassian meets her eyes across the hatch to see with a shock that she’s laughing again. “Down! Land! _Land now!”_

He hesitates, because that’s _insane_ , what in the world is she –

 _“Cassian,”_ Jyn shouts, and glances out of the hatch again, her gaze focused somewhere in the trees. “ _Please.”_

His throat is dry, his ears ringing, and he is insane, utterly insane, but he turns to the cockpit and screams, “Kay, land! Put us back down!”

Kay’s optics swing around to look at him in astonishment, but to Cassian’s surprise and gratitude, he does not argue. The U-Wing wobbles under blaster fire, and drops with an awkward thud back to the ground.

Out the hatch, he can see the Zygerrian’s sharp teeth gleaming through the smoke, the grin of a hunter closing in on her prey. Cassian risks another shot, catching her in her enormous left ear. The smile vanishes from her face, replaced by a vicious snarl as she shakes her head, yowling. When she bares her teeth at him again, there is nothing remotely amused about it. He sees her flick a switch on her rifle, slap a secondary ammo pack in, and then a near-unbroken stream of thick green blasts begin to burn a hole in his bulkhead. The metal grows so hot by his head that he has to shuffle back towards the cockpit, unable to risk even a quick unaimed shot out the open hatch. Sweat drips down his back, his heart is throbbing so fast he cannot discern the individual beats, everything inside him screams that he’s cornered, he’s trapped, he’s _failed._

Jyn throws back her head and wails.

It’s a chilling scream, a long ululation that echoes inside the U-Wing and rings out into the smoke-filled beach. The Zygerrian pauses, her snarl faltering with uncertainty, but the Humans and the roaring Nautolan don’t stop their coordinated firing pattern, so she raises her rifle again.

And then she freezes. Even from his distance and through the haze of the battle, Cassian can see her eyes turn dark and unfocused.

She crashes to the beach, a bone-handled knife sprouting from her back, as if it had grown magically between her shoulder-blades.

Jyn’s ululating call echoes from the forest around them, bouncing off the white and red cliffs, terrifying and powerful and _coming closer_.

The blaster fire abruptly cuts off.

“The fuck is that?” One of the Human bounty hunters calls out. Cassian can’t see her, but he can hear how her voice turns away as she speaks, facing out into the forest.

“More of them!” The Nautolan screams, and heaves her great repeater blaster around.

A earth-shattering roar tears through the blaster fire and the ululating cries, followed by another, and another. Jyn bolts out of the U-Wing before Cassian can organize any thought more coherent than _what in all the - ?_

On top of the wrecked ship, the Nautolan’s repeater clicks empty, and he sees her struggling frantically to get it reloaded. He lifts his blaster and centers it on her back.

A giant claw bursts up over the far edge of the wrecked ship and buries monstrous black talons in the bounty hunter’s body. Her blue head jerks and her repeater crunches inside the ropey pink fingers, and then the claw wrenches her out of sight. One of the roaring beasts stops abruptly.

The other two bounty hunters scream.

Cassian doesn’t know what’s happening, and from the way Kay has risen from the cockpit but not attempted to move forward, he doesn’t have any helpful input either.

But Jyn’s out there, and he committed to this course of action when he ordered Kay to land the ship again.

Cassian grips his blaster and launches himself out of the U-Wing, hitting the beach running as he bolts after the dim silhouette of Jyn, several steps ahead of him and gaining ground. He lets off a cluster of blind shots over his shoulder to where the ocean-side Human bounty hunter had been firing, but doesn’t wait around to see if he’s hit anything. A part of him almost hopes he missed – he’s going to need one of these hunters alive, if he wants to know how the hells they tracked him through hyperspace. But that’s a problem for later. Right now, he needs to get to Jyn.

He bursts through a particularly thick cloud of smoke in time to see the other Human bounty hunter locked in close combat with a woman in a heavily embroidered cloak that swirls around her, blue and white patterns dancing along her dark limbs as she moves. Beyond the strange Dathomiri warrior –

Cassian slows, his steps stumbling as he sees what is behind the combatants but he doesn’t stop, can’t stop, because Jyn is running straight for them and Cassian has done a lot of things he doesn’t want to remember in his life but he’ll be damned if he lets Jyn run alone into a herd of howling rancor.

The bounty hunter smashes her fist down on the Dathomiri’s throat, or tries to, but the woman flows away and spins low, knocking her opponent to the sand by the ankles. Cassian watches with curious detachment as the Dathomiri raises a wood and bone spear and slams it through the downed hunter’s leg. The woman on the ground screams and fires her blaster wildly, causing the Dathomiri warriors nearest to scatter. Cassian ducks a stray bolt and doesn’t slow. It all seems very far away and improbable, and definitely not as important as the fact that Jyn has just run directly up to one of the rancor, a massive pink and white creature with claws that drip with blue gore.

The beast raises one of those dripping claws towards Jyn. Cassian lifts his blaster and centers it on the creature’s right eye. _Force,_ that might not even kill it in time; rancor are notoriously hard to kill, even with a direct head shot. But then Jyn leaps up into the rancor’s palm and…and pulls herself up to it’s hideous bulbous head, where he can suddenly see thick leather traces lying across it’s cranium.

“Good girl, Mooi!” Jyn shouts, and pulls the leather traces. The rancor stomps directly toward him, and some part of Cassian freezes in utter terror while another part of him detaches completely. This is insane. He is insane. _Jyn_ is insane.

“Come on,” she bellows, and does something with her leather traces that makes the rancor extend it’s bloody claws to him.

Cassian grabs the black talons, each longer than his forearm, and when the beast lifts him higher, he climbs up to the head and settles himself behind Jyn. She flashes him a brilliant smile over her shoulder and points to her waist. She winks. He stares at her, and then gives up and leans forward, looping one arm around her body and settling his rifle on his thigh with his other hand, ready to fire.

Oh yes.

Definitely insane.

The rancor nearest to them bellows, and the creature’s rider pats it’s head and coos, her red sash fluttering like a banner. Lyra waves politely at Cassian when she sees him looking, as cool as if they were passing one another in a grocery and not from atop raging monsters in the middle of a battle. Below him, he catches brief sight of a tall black form peering up at him with glowing white optics, and then Jyn sings out, “Mooi, _charge!”_

The rancor surges forward, directly into the burning ship, and Cassian rips his attention from Kay and Lyra and the herd of rancor swarming through the smoke. His vision fills with flames, smoke, twisted metal, and a strand of dark hair that flies up in front of his eyes. Jyn’s hair has almost completely fallen from her bun. She leans further over the rancor’s head to balance as the beast leaps up and claws to the top of the ship, pulling Cassian forward with her, and he lets himself press his face to her shoulder, just for a moment, just to feel her alive and warm against him. The rancor makes it to the top of the ship, bellowing, and Jyn raises her blaster and opens fire at the other side of the wreck. Cassian lets go of her waist long enough to reach up and swipe his hand across the back of her neck, gathering her hair and tucking it firmly into the back of her shirt. Jyn’s aim falters, her shots spraying in an odd, uncontrolled pattern for a few seconds. But with her hair out of his eyes, Cassian can finally see what she sees; movement down among the shattered wings of the Decimator.

The rancor underneath him roars and _leaps_ , sailing over the wreckage towards the metal-strewn beach. Jyn snaps both her hands to the harness leads, Cassian clings to her with his free arm again, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees the gleam of a blaster barrel centered on Jyn.

The moment suspends, the rancor poised in midair with Jyn curled forward over it’s head and Cassian can see _everything_ , the line from the bounty hunter’s blaster to Jyn’s heart (straight, fast, deadly), the time it will take Jyn to drop the traces and pull her blaster (too long), the line between his own rifle and the bounty hunter’s head (curved, thrown by the light refracting from the ocean, the extreme angle of his perch, the terror that lances through him at the sight of a weapon honing on Jyn). The cold drops over him as abruptly as a light switching off, and he twists in the saddle, brings his rifle up with one arm, inhale, aim, fire.

His shot strikes the bounty hunter directly between the eyes. She drops like a stone, her rifle pulling hard left as she falls and sending her shot wide.

The rancor hits the ground like a meteor, cratering the beach and sending red-white pebbles flying in a small shock wave around them. Cassian’s stomach catches up a second later, and the cold sniper’s detachment shatters as the pebbles settle.

From the other side of the ship, he hears another rancor roaring, and then, suddenly, nothing but the snapping of flames and the soft _shush, shush_ of the ocean waves.

Jyn twists in the saddle and makes some kind of sing-song call towards the trees. A moment later, the call echoes back to her. Jyn turns to look up at him over her shoulder, her hair spilling from her collar, her face smudged with dirt and blood, and her eyes bright with triumph. “It’s done,” she says.

Cassian lets his rifle hang by the strap from his shoulder, and cautiously sets his newly freed hand on her hip. “Are you alright?”

She starts to give him a calm (fake) smile, then stops, and he sees her eyes go distant and unsure. Her hair is matted with dried blood on one side, her chest a mess of sliced cloth and brownish-red stains. “I’m…” she takes a quick breath, blinking. Underneath them, the rancor shifts restlessly and makes a lowing noise, jarringly soft and unhappy. Jyn reaches out and rubs her palm over the hard ridge at the top of the rancor’s head and it – she? - settles again, a faint rumble vibrating from within her chest as a long, scaly tongue flops out of the side of her vast mouth between sharp yellow teeth. “Good girl, _min pusling, min Mooi_. Good girl.”

Cassian watches the long tongue swing a little in the ocean breeze a half-meter from his leg. A few drops of saliva tinged with blue blood drip to the white stones. It’s not the weirdest thing he’s ever seen in his life, but its close.

“I’m so tired,” Jyn says quietly.

Cassian slips his hand from her hip to around her waist and tugs gently with both arms. Jyn falls back against him easily, and sighs.

They are both a mess, covered in blood, sweat, and dust, bruised and battered and exhausted, but Jyn’s body curves sweetly against his own and she wraps her arms over his, their fingers twining tightly, and they are fine. They are going to be fine.

Around her neck, Jyn’s crystal shimmers with a rainbow haze.

“Fire’s Kiss,” a voice cuts through the peace like a knife. “She Who Wanders The Stars. Jyn, Daughter of Lyra, Daughter of Blue Coral. _Explain yourself.”_

They jolt upright, even the rancor shuddering and spinning surprise. Several dark, cloaked shapes filter around the sides of the Decimator, their hoods drawn up, their knives and spears and blasters glinting in the rising sunlight. On top of the smoldering wreck stand three rancor, each with a cloaked woman astride their bulbous heads. The woman on the left has skin so dark she gleams, streaks of yellow and orange painted through her long dark braids and around her eyes. Her cloak is woven with all the colors of the sunset, making it appear that flames stream from her shoulders. The woman on the right is Lyra, streaked with brilliant red, a kyber crystal glinting from the stock of her rifle. The last woman rides between them, and Cassian recognizes the blue and white patterns on her dusky limbs; this was the Dathomiri fighting the other Human bounty hunter.

Cassian glances down at her hip. A Human head dangles from the Dathomiri’s belt. It appears that she won.

“Matriarch,” Jyn says in a loud, clear voice, and Cassian belated pulls his hands back from gripping her waist. Jyn is broadcasting Proud Warrior With Nothing To Hide, and he doesn’t want to undermine her by clinging to her as she speaks. It also lets him drop his hand casually to his thigh, closer to his rifle’s stock. Just in case.

“Several days ago,” Jyn announces to the circle of watching women, “I hunted a stenorel male, that I drove from our territories into the lands of the Scissorfists. As I followed the beast, I came upon –“

“An offworlder, yes, we’ve gathered,” the Matriarch interrupts dryly. Her rancor suddenly stomps forward and leaps, landing heavily in the sand in front of them. Mooi twitches but Jyn reaches out and scratches her cranial ridge again, and the beast steadies. “You always have been a curious child,” the Matriarch says as Lyra and the sunset-painted rider join them on the beach. Everyone else ignores the shaking ground and spray of white stones, so Cassian keeps his face completely neutral and focuses on the Matriarch. “Drawn to the strangest of people.”

“These bounty hunters were chasing him,” Jyn starts again, but again the Matriarch shrugs and waves a hand.

“House of Renliss,” she tells them, casually dismissing one of the more vicious Imperial-aligned bounty hunting guilds in the galaxy. “They allied with a group of Scissorfists to capture the man. This was permissible,” she gives Cassian a cool look, which he returns, “but taking a Blue Coral Sister was not. The Sharp Mother and I have spoken on this.” The Matriarch’s thin lips stretch up into an unpleasant smile. “She did not enjoy knowing her people had bargained with offworlders against Daughters of the Force. She will make restitution.” She speaks the word with relish, but Cassian feels only a sour sensation in his belly. Nothing about the idea of Jyn being captured and tortured makes him feel remotely amused. Behind the Matriarch, Lyra’s expression mirrors his thoughts, but she says nothing.

“What I would know, Daughter,” the Matriarch goes on, her face turning stern again. “Is how long you have known the calling was upon you.” She points at Jyn’s throat. The crystal is as dark and unremarkable as any stone now, though Jyn’s body is still pressed against his. Cassian can’t tell if the stone simply no longer wishes to glow, or if Jyn is actively suppressing it, as he now understands she had been doing, before.

“It is not a calling,” Jyn says, low and fierce. “He is – he is _leaving.”_ Her voice falters in time to the stutter in Cassian’s heart, but she rallies faster than he does. “And I remain here.” She turns and looks squarely at Lyra. “As I promised.”

Lyra bows her head, hiding her expression from them all.

The Matriarch opens her mouth to speak again, but then the third rider, the dark woman sheathed in woven flame, raises a hand. “I would speak.”

The Matriarch closes her mouth, her eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Dusk Sister,” Jyn murmurs, then seems to rally herself. “I have no more to tell you that you do not seem to know.”

The dark woman smiles. “Not to you, Fire’s Kiss,” she says gently. Her eyes lift to Cassian.

He fights the shiver that runs through him, because this woman looks at him like she sees his whole life written out on his skin, like she’s reading through his every thought and deed like a farmer at a market, picking the pieces of him up and examining them critically. It’s somehow similar to the look Jyn gives him, staring right through his masks to the man inside, but _that_ feels like a comfort, like being _known_. This is…he is pulled apart, weighed, measured, and then discarded, and though the touch is gentle, it is unwelcome and unwanted. Cassian clamps his teeth together and pushes back on the anger and fear, locking down his thoughts and expression to be as unresponsive as he can.

Jyn’s legs tighten, and Mooi steps back, growling as she turns to position Jyn between Cassian and the other Dathomiri.

The Dusk Sister’s face turns sad. “Ah,” she says softly. “Forgive me. I forget, sometimes, how strange our lives and ways may be to those not raised within our Clan.” The horrible sensation of being picked apart vanishes, and the Dusk Sister rises gracefully, swinging herself from the back of her rancor to the ground. This seems to be some kind of signal; the Matriarch and Lyra also dismount. Jyn leans back suddenly, her shoulders hard against his chest as she rests one hand on his thigh.

He covers her hand with his own and leans forward into her, and then she kicks her leg over and whistles to the rancor. The beast lifts her heavy claw again for them both, lowering them to the ground. Cassian catches Jyn’s eye as they step to the sands and arches a brow at her, and she shrugs. If he hadn’t been there, of course she would have just leaped down like the others. She’s only being kind, her smirk tells him, to the poor offworlder.

Cassian lets his small answering smile fade before he turns away from Mooi’s sheltering bulk and faces the Witches of Dathomir.

Fifteen of them circle him now, the Matriarch, Lyra, and the Dusk Sister standing the nearest. Lyra now holds a dark bundle of torn cloth that he recognizes as Jyn’s embroidered cloak tucked around some kind of bag. She clutches the bundle to her chest, and does not meet Cassian’s eye.

Dusk Sister walks forward, her face serene, her orange and yellow waist-length braids flowing out behind her as she moves and blending into her fiery cloak. She is tall, lean, with sharply defined features highlighted by the orange and yellow paints she wears. She is staggeringly beautiful, a creature not made for this world, her eyes deep wells of shadows and secrets that might well sweep him under until he is lost.

Jyn tenses at his side, but Cassian can hear a distinct clomping sound, growing louder behind the rancor. Cassian waits until Kay stomps his way into sight, causing Mooi to startle and whine as he appears suddenly by her feet. Jyn shushes her rancor, and Cassian motions for Kay to stand next to her. Kay’s optics bore into Cassian for a rebellious moment, and then he moves to Jyn’s side. “I am made of hardened metal and have had extensive reinforcing upgrades,” he says loudly into the silence.

Jyn frowns at him.

“I can survive a rancor’s digestive system,” he clarifies, and then adds, after a beat, “It would not be a pleasant experience for either of us.”

Jyn rolls her eyes, and Cassian walks out to where the Dusk Sister stands patiently in the sand, watching him. Her eyes are deep, dark pools rimmed with yellow, and she regards him curiously, completely composed and unafraid that he might attempt anything violent towards her. He supposes the definition of her muscled form, the dozen armed warriors, and four giant rancor watching him from every direction might have something to do with it. “You are a soldier, yes?” the woman says thoughtfully as he comes to a halt before her. She stands poised and regal before him, her head high and her hands folded before her, waiting for his answer.

Cassian shakes his head.

“You are seeking something, I think.” Her thin lips twitch into a sudden smile, “More than one thing, hm?”

He nods, not sure where she’s going with this.

“You are seeking answers for your people,” she says, and raises an eyebrow until he nods again. “You seek answers for yourself.” He hesitates, but her eyes are so compelling, her body language so relaxed and calm, that he lets his head bow slightly, a half-hearted acknowledgment. “You want more than that, however,” she continues, and her eyes leave his for a moment to glance over his shoulder, toward Jyn. “Do you not?”

The last question hits him like a bucket of cold water; Cassian catches himself about to nod again, and shoves away the impulse. Dusk Sister blinks as if he has said something rude, and then she relaxes, her hands dropping from their elegant pose, her shoulders rolling back, and she balances her weight casually on one leg. “Very good, Offworlder,” she says approvingly, and suddenly she looks less like a judge towering over him and more like a woman with a taste for bright colors and a pleasant, smiling face. Even her eyes somehow seem less dark, gone from unknowable deep shadows to an ordinary, Human brown. She’s still beautiful, but the intimidating other-worldliness has faded.

“A strong mind,” Dusk Sister nods to him, and then tucks a braid back behind her ear. “Good. You will need that.” She flicks her gaze over his shoulder again, winks at him, and then strolls back to the waiting Matriarch. “Ask him why he hasn’t left already,” she pats the Matriarch’s shoulder. “Be nice.”

The Matriarch gives her a flat, unimpressed look, and then strides towards Cassian. He stands his ground, although the heavily armed and heavily muscled woman bearing down on him now is a lot different than the floating regal drift of the Dusk Sister. “Well?” She demands as she draws even with him. “Why are you still here, Offworlder?”

Over the Matriarch’s shoulder, Dusk Sister presses her hand to her face and closes her eyes.

Cassian flattens his expression and makes his body language indifferent. “Business,” he says calmly, and then closes his mouth. He has reached the end of his rope, and he might have lost his damn mind riding around a battlefield on a rancor, but he is still a captain in the Alliance, a spy, a high-order operative, _Fulcrum_. This woman won’t attack him, not with Jyn, Kay, and a rancor on his side (possibly Lyra and her beast too). She can get in his face all she likes; he’s calling her bluff. And he’s not giving her _anything._

“Business,” she repeats, eyes narrow, hand on her knife hilt. The bloody head of the former bounty hunter swings at her waist. Cassian looks at it pointedly, then back to her face.

“Your head is dripping,” he tells her.

She looks down at the streak of blood on her leg, her face oddly blank, and then she sighs, loudly. “Right,” she says in a less aggressive tone, brisk but not biting. “Let us begin again, hm? What has kept you on our planet, Son of the Alliance? Why have you not fled when you had the chance?”

Cassian’s gut tightens at the word ‘Alliance,’ but Lyra still won’t meet his eye, staring past him at the U-Wing several meters away. She probably told her clan everything she knew of the Alliance spy hiding on their beaches, running after giant cat-birds with her daughter, and generally doing everything _but_ his job.

“We have a tracker on board our ship,” Kay pipes up from behind him. Cassian snaps to the side to look at him, careful not to turn his back on the Matriarch. Kay tilts his head at Cassian, not sounding the least bit remorseful. “We have been unable to find it,” he says. “Perhaps they can.”

“The hunters are dead,” Cassian starts, then shuts up in surprise as Lyra marches past him, nearly shoving him aside as she heads directly for the U-Wing. Jyn reaches out a hand as if to grab her mother’s arm as she passes, and then thinks better of it and withdraws. She exchanges a worried look with Cassian, and then turns and follows her mother’s quick, determined steps across the sand.

“I think we should follow them,” Kay informs him.

“So do I,” the Matriarch says wryly.

Only the rancor stay as the rest move towards his ship. Cassian catches up with Jyn just as Lyra hoists herself into the U-Wing’s open hatch. The other women flow around them, peering in at the edges of the open hatch, leaning on one another’s shoulders to see over their sisters, even a few climbing deftly up the sides of the U-Wing to hang over the top and watch as Lyra comes to a halt inside the cargo bay.

The crowd jostles him forward, one of the Dathomiri bumping his shoulder and then looking him up and down with distinct interest. Cassian edges closer to Jyn, who lifts her hand, hesitates, and then with a stubborn expression grabs his fingers. Cassian shifts more comfortably in her grip and holds tight.

Lyra stands in the cargo bay of the U-Wing for a moment, and then whirls around, seeking out Dusk Sister’s gaze. She points to her left without looking. Dark shadows well in Dusk Sister’s eyes, and then she relaxes again, and nods.

Lyra leans down and picks up something from the mess of gear on the U-Wing deck. Cassian squints; it’s the box from the medkit, stamped with the old Mandalore governor’s seal. He’s never gotten around to checking what medical gear is in that –

Wait.

_Fuck._

The realization hits him half a second before Lyra pops the top off the little box and turns it upside down on her palm. A small, greyish lump falls into her hand, and Cassian wants to punch himself.

Around him, the women hiss as the morning sun hits the grey shape and it casts an odd, uneven shadow on Lyra’s skin. Even Jyn flinches, pressing up against his arm. Cassian turns to her in concern. Sure, he’s furious with himself for never even thinking to check the thrice-damned medkit that he picked up _on the planet where his cover was blown_ , _what are you, Andor, new?_ But this strange reaction is concerning and unexpected.

“Kyber,” she explains, voice hoarse. “But…wrong. Somehow.”

“Infused with some kind of dark energy,” Lyra stares at the stone with detached scientific interest.

“Befouled,” the Matriarch sneers, leaning back with revulsion.

“Turn it over,” Dusk Sister murmurs.

Lyra flips the stone, and her eyes widen. “Imperial,” she says in the softest voice he’s heard from her, her lip quivering before she suppresses it and becomes stern. “Arakyd Industries.”

Cassian clears his throat. “Droid manufacturers,” he says carefully, because he’s still not sure he understands what’s happening here, neither why a stone would have anything to do with hyperspace tracking nor why all these women are so clearly repulsed by it. “Arakyd Industries makes droids. What do they have to do with kyber crystals?”

“Why does it feel so sick?” Jyn adds softly.

Lyra raises a finger, her attention still intent on the crystal. “It’s match should be in the big ship,” she says, pointing down the beach.

The Matriarch snaps something in the Dathomiri tongue, and one of the women darts toward the burning Decimator, her swirling cloak making it appear as if she floats over the sand.

To Cassian’s shock, it’s Kay who speaks next. “A paired set,” he whirrs. “One deposited within our ship, and the other used by the bounty hunters to track it.”

Several pairs of eyes turn to regard him, and Dusk Sister drifts closer. Cassian tenses, but all she does is gaze upward thoughtfully. “Tell me, metal one,” she says. “Are you the property of this offworlder?”

“I am a component of his crew,” Kay cocks his head. “I am currently the only official member of his crew.”

“He has no control module,” Jyn blurts out. "Ca- the offworlder removed it."

Cassian should probably feel more concern about a dozen total strangers knowing this, but every one of them (save Lyra, who doesn’t appear to be paying any attention at all) gives him an approving look. One of the older women even reaches out and pats a gnarled hand against his elbow. Cassian holds himself very still until she stops, and then rubs his thumb over Jyn’s knuckles, tracing aimless patterns on her skin and focusing on the way her fingers flex in his.

“Interesting,” Dusk Sister smiles, her eyes dark, and then the chosen Dathomiri comes running back from the Decimator, something wrapped in a corner of her cloak to keep it from touching her skin. She drops it carefully at Lyra’s feet, and it rolls through the scattered debris of his medkit and pack. Another greyish stone, gleaming dully.

“They call to one another,” Dusk Sister holds her hand outstretched and stares into the second stone, but does not attempt to touch it. “They are tainted, twisted by darkness and told to search the stars, drawn by the energy of the Force. It is clumsily done, a first attempt, perhaps, or a second.” She shakes her head as if to clear it. “But not the last.”

“I can fix it,” Lyra announces, looking up at last. She picks up the second stone and holds them both in her palm, speaking directly to the Matriarch. “I can clear them both. It will take some time in my primary dig site. But I can clean these up.”

The Matriarch considers her for a moment, and it strikes Cassian then that Jyn is very much her mother’s daughter. Lyra lifts her chin under the Matriarch’s scrutiny with a defiant glare, and the resemblance is so strong that he shoots a sideways glance to Jyn. Her face is impassive, but her eyes intent, and her shoulder presses hard against Cassian’s as she watches.

“Very well,” the Matriarch says. “Take them. Purify them. You will need something to occupy yourself, I suppose,” she adds, tapping her knife hilt, “After your daughter has gone.”

Cassian jumps in surprise, and then realizes that no one else has reacted to this extraordinary pronouncement at all. “What?”

All eyes turn to him, and he feels Jyn flinch but stay close.

“You have been called,” the Matriarch booms. “You shall answer, as you are bound.”

The Dusk Sister clears her throat, a soft sound that nonetheless carries over the crashing of the waves.

The Matriarch huffs. “You are called by the Force,” she starts again in a less domineering tone. “You and our Daughter have some great task out among the stars. She will go with you, when you leave this place.”

Cassian turns to Jyn, but her face is still impassive. She drops his hand and steps back, watching him with distant, unreadable eyes. She has never told him that she even wants to leave her planet, in fact has strongly implied that she is weary of the war outside her world and wants no part in it. She spoke of a promise not to leave her mother again. She has friends here, a home, even a pet. He won’t drag her away from any of it, Force magic or kyber crystals be damned.

“That’s not your decision,” he tells the Matriarch. Her face darkens, but on this, Cassian will not budge.

The Matriarch glowers at him, and he prepares for a fight. “Five barrels of bacta,” she says, and he almost staggers back.

“What?”

“Six barrels,” she narrows her eyes. “We will bring them to your ship. They are large, and worth over a thousand credits on the market. Each.”

Cassian’s mouth hangs open, and he closes it with a snap. “What are you doing?”

“She is bargaining with you,” Kay tells him, ever helpful. “I recommend you accept her offer. Blue Coral bacta has proven exceptionally potent.”

Cassian pinches his nose. “I’m not looking for bacta,” he says, although a small part of him admits that this isn’t entirely true. Bacta acquisition is a standing background order; technically, if Cassian is ever in a position to secure the valuable medical supplement, he is expected to do so. But that’s not the point here, the point is that this woman is essentially trying to bribe him to kidnap Jyn, and it’s patently ridiculous. “I’m not concerned about a task or a calling, either,” he starts. “I have my own work to –“

“Galen Erso is my husband,” Lyra says from the door of the U-Wing, her hands balled tight at her sides.

Jyn gasps, a quiet, strangled sound.

Cassian looks at Lyra, then Jyn, whose green eyes are wide and shadowed with… _fear._ She is afraid of what he will do with this information. Afraid of how he will react. Afraid of _him,_ knowing the name of her father. He thinks of her face when he first grabbed at her crystal, the shocked blankness when he asked her about the dream. He thinks of running through the forest with her hand in his, of watching her break a monster’s bones to get to him, of her palms against his chest and her hair tickling his nose. He thinks of orders and Imperial weapons and the endless grind of a war he won’t ever see won.

He meets her eyes squarely and lets down his walls, just enough that only Jyn can see what is in his face. “I know.”

It takes her a moment to understand, and then Cassian has the privilege of watching the fear melt from her eyes, replaced with a shining light that makes his heart stutter and his breath catch.

“Seven barrels,” the Matriarch says wearily. “Take them and accept your fate with grace, offworlder.”

Cassian does not look at her, his gaze steady with Jyn’s. The corner of her mouth twitches, and she inclines her head the smallest bit.

“Seven barrels,” Cassian agrees. “And an answer.”

A ripple runs through the women around him, and the Dusk Sister chuckles under her breath, “Oh, this should be good.”

“Done.” The Matriarch rolls out a long stream of orders in Dathomiri, and several of the sisters reluctantly turn away and slink into the forest in loose formation, possibly gone to fetch the bacta barrels. One of them mutters something in an undertone to her nearest friend, peering at Cassian through her eyelashes as she does. The two giggle, and Jyn shoots them both a glower that could fry eggs.

“Ask your question, then,” the Matriarch folds her arms and regards him through narrowed eyes.

Cassian squares his shoulders. “What is the third truth?”

Astonishment floods her face, and she leans to the side to stare at Jyn.

“I told him nothing,” Jyn says defensively. “He knew the true things when he came.”

“Not all of them, apparently,” Dusk Sister says dryly.

The Matriarch regards him critically, and then purses her lips. She gestures imperiously to Lyra, who shrugs, and looks to Jyn. By the time Cassian has made it back around to looking at Jyn, she looks thoroughly exasperated. “The three true things,” she says at last in a sing-song tone, “Everything rots.”

“Debatable,” Kay interjects.

Jyn glares at him. “ _Everything_ rots,” she repeats pointedly. “Everything dies.” She hesitates, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to say _I can never remember the third thing_ , and it’s on the tip of his tongue to say _I forget that one too_ , as if it is some well-worn script between them, an acknowledgement, a benediction. Instead, she takes a deep breath. “Everything is made new again.”

The words echo in his head like the cries of the Dathomiri echoeing in the cliffs, and he is suddenly five years old, small and uncertain in his big coat with his big family all around, his mother humming in his ear after a terrible nightmare. He had been standing on a beach watching a man he thought was his father walking into an ocean of blood, and a voice had cried out, _don’t go, don’t leave!_ But the man had shaken his head and spoken the truth, _everything rots. Everything dies_.

And a woman in the dream – or perhaps his mother as she woke him, sniffling and clinging to her neck - _someone_ had whispered, _but oh, my darling_ , _everything is made new again_.

On the beach, Cassian swallows hard against the lump in his throat and nods.

“It’s done,” the Matriarch announces, and then without further comment, turns and whistles. The largest of the rancor trots obediently over, sand spraying up with each colossal step, and she leaps gracefully to the saddle. The others depart in her wake, Dusk Sister flashing a wink at Jyn before she steps into her rancor’s politely extended claws and allows it to lift her to her own saddle. In less than five minutes, the beach is clear of everyone except Cassian, Kay, Jyn, and Lyra.

“I am going to run engine checks,” Kay breaks the silence first. “Please confine all awkward emotional conversations to the outside of the ship.”

Cassian coughs as his friend walks past him and into the U-Wing. Kay steps easily around the gear on the deck, although he takes care to step directly on the now-empty box with the governor’s seal. It crumples under his heavy metal foot, a sad pile of flattened cardboard left in his wake.

Lyra steps down from the ship as Kay passes, and makes a warbling call that brings her rancor shambling towards them. Cassian retreats closer to the U-Wing as the thing stomps close, trying and failing to keep his trepidation off his face. Jyn smirks at him, then sings her own rancor over. Lyra leaps up to her saddle without a word or backwards glance, and Cassian tenses in anger at her callous behavior when he sees the flash of surprise and hurt on Jyn’s face. But Lyra doesn’t ride away, she retrieves the bundle of Jyn’s torn cloak and the bag it is wrapped around, and jumps back down to the beach. Up close, Cassian can see that the cloak has been mended, and a new pattern picked out in blue and grey added around the collar.

Lyra sets the bundle in Jyn’s arms. “Supplies."

Jyn looks at the bundle, then her mother. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice strained, her eyes overly bright.

Cassian turns away and hauls himself into the U-Wing. He starts to pick up the scattered gear on the floor, kicking the crushed cardboard out of the hatch with a scrape of his boot and a scowl.

Behind him, he hears someone sniff, the sound muffled by cloth or an arm.

“I had no right to demand that promise from you,” Lyra says in a low voice. “I had no right to shackle you out of fear.”

“I would have stayed,” Jyn answers, and he knows without looking that she is fighting to keep her voice even. “This time. I would have stayed. But…”

The skin on the back of his neck prickles, the sharp blade of her attention on him, but Cassian keeps his eyes on the deck. They need this time. Jyn needs this time.

“I know,” Lyra says, and out of the corner of his eye he sees her reaching for Jyn, pulling her in close. “I know, _mit barn_ , my stardust. I know.”

They are silent for several long seconds, and then he hears the rustle of cloth and the crunch of sand, knows that they have pulled apart and are wiping their faces, adjusting their clothes. Lyra clears her throat loudly, and Cassian takes that as a sign that she wants to speak to him, too. He turns and walks to the edge of the hatch, and offers Jyn his hand. She grabs it, pulls herself up beside him. Lyra looks up at them both solemnly. “Trust the Force,” she says, her face intent. “And come home whenever you can,” she adds quickly, turning on her heel and practically running up her rancor’s side. The beast sidles a few steps, and then Lyra calls, “Jyn.”

Jyn makes a low chirruping sound, and Cassian valiantly tries not to flinch as her rancor shuffles close and leans down, her powerful breath panting into the small cargo space.

“Good girl, Mooi,” Jyn coos, and stretches up her arms to hug the beast. Her eyes are suspiciously wet again. “Be a good girl, _min pusling_. I’ll miss you.” She whispers something in Dathomiri, kisses the rancor’s bulgy pink nose, and steps back. “Go on,” she says, swallowing. “Go on with Mama.”

Lyra whistles, and Mooi the rancor whines but shuffles obediently away.

Lyra raises her hand. Cassian glances at Jyn, but she’s fiddling with her cut shirt determinedly, focusing her attention on the stains to avoid crying.

Cassian lifts his hand in answer to Lyra, and watches as both rancor stomp away into the forest.

And just like that, they are alone.

“You don’t have to do this,” Cassian tells her.

Jyn raises her head and watches him from red-rimmed eyes.

“I know they’ve…sent you away,” he shakes his head. “But you don’t have to come back to the rebellion with me. Just…just tell me where you want to go. I will get you there, give you a few credits if you need them. You don’t have to do this.”

“So long as I tell you everything I can about my – about Galen Erso,” she says in a distant tone, shrugging as if this means nothing to her.

Cassian stops her, gripping her shoulders with both hands and waiting until she looks up at him to shake his head. “No. You don’t have to tell me a damn thing.”

“Unwise,” Kay calls from the cockpit. “You have no other viable leads on the weapons project.”

“I’ll ask Saw Gerrera,” Cassian bites back.

“Saw will kill you as soon as look at you, Alliance,” Jyn tells him, her voice still wavering around the edges. The reddish light of the sun turns her skin a rosy pink and puts red highlights in her dark hair, but her eyes are as green as spring on Yavin, and twice as alive.

“One of his agents then. I have a few possible contacts in with his people. I’ll start developing one of those.”

“Your leaders won’t be very happy with you, if you let go of an asset when you –“ She cuts off as Cassian lifts her hand to his mouth and presses her fingers to his lips.

“No,” he says quietly against her skin. “They won’t.”

Jyn opens her mouth, closes it, and then a smile begins to blossom on her face. Cassian watches her over her hand; it’s like watching the sun rise after a long, dark night. “Everything begins again,” she says.

He quirks an eyebrow at her. “I thought it was ‘is made afresh.’”

Jyn giggles, though he can see her struggling to bite it back. It’s a beautiful sound, and a young one, turning her from a tired, battered warrior to a young woman flirting with someone she likes. She winks at him. “Is it? I can never remember the third one.”

“I forget that one, too,” he whispers, and she is so close now he can see the little starburst of dark green that rings her pupils, tiny dark rays extending out into the lighter green of her irises. She pulls her hand from his and presses both palms against his chest; the warmth sinks into his skin and muscles and kick-starts his heart into a pounding rhythm beneath her touch.

“It is ‘ _everything is made new again_ ,’” Kay says loudly from the cockpit. “And the cargo bay does not qualify as “outside the ship.””

Jyn rolls her eyes and steps back, and Cassian sighs.

“Life forms approaching,” Kay adds. “If you care about that sort of thing.”

“The bacta,” Jyn points out toward the forest, where branches are shivering under the force of heavy rancor footsteps in a line towards the beach. “Your seven barrels.”

“Thank you,” he says, brushing a strand of sweaty hair from her cheek, some of his good mood dimming as he looks again at the blood in her hair and on her chest. “I’d like you to use some, alright?”

She glances down, then nods. “Good call, but,” she holds up one hand. “Tell me the sonic works on this thing.”

He grins, jerks his head toward the back of the ship. “Get cleaned up, Jyn. We’ll leave when the barrels are loaded.”

“Seven barrels of high quality bacta and a living relative to your target,” she muses, taking care not to linger on the word ‘target.’ “Your command will love you for this one, won’t they?”

Cassian pictures Draven’s face when he tries to explain why he was incommunicado for days, and considers how many things he will have to leave out of his report. “That might be too strong a word,” he jokes.

Four rancor stomp out of the forest, each one carrying a cloaked Dathomiri woman and a large barrel on either side of their saddles. The Matriarch must be feeling particularly generous – or someone persuaded her to feel that way. Cassian certainly isn’t going to turn down an extra barrel of bacta.

It takes Jyn five minutes to clean herself up and change into the clothes that were presumably in Lyra’s bag. It takes the Dathomiri five more to finish loading the bacta and securing it in his cargo bay. And then Cassian takes five minutes to squeeze himself into the sonic while Jyn speaks a few quiet words with the women who brought the bacta, nothing as intensely personal as the farewell to her mother, or her rancor, for that matter, but he lets her have the privacy anyway.

And then there is nothing more to do but slip into the pilot’s seat, help Kay run through the final launch sequence, and lift away from the sheltered little beach, skimming over the purple waves before pulling up into the open sky.

Jyn leans against the back of his chair and watches the planet she lived on for so many years fall away.

They break atmo, and Cassian pauses on the hyperdrive throttle. “I mean it, Jyn,” he tells her. “Anywhere you want to go.”

She reaches out, traces her fingertip down the line of his jaw and lingering over his lips like a kiss. “Offworlder,” she says, her eyes bright, her crystal glinting with rainbow colors at her throat. “ _Cassian_. Take us home.”

He smiles against her, and obliges.

 

* * *

 

The third true thing, Tío Arej tells his nephews and nieces, is that death is not the end. Everything rots, this is true. Everything dies, this is also true. But all the power of death cannot hide the third true thing, that death is finite, and life is not. The third true thing, Tío Arej ruffles his nephew’s hair, is that sooner or later, everything is made new again. “You know what that means, little one,” he grins as Cassian bats away his hand and scowls with all the dignity a five-year-old can muster. “It means everything is gonna be okay, yeah?”

He chucks Cassian’s chin and then lifts one of Cassian’s sisters to his knee, bouncing her and grinning as she squeals in delight. “Sooner or later,” he laughs, “everything will be okay.”

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [VT-49 Decimator](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/VT-49_Decimator/Legends) was typically an Imperial Army ship, but I see no reason a wealthy bounty hunter guild with strong Imperial ties wouldn't have one.
> 
> [The Witches of Dathomir rode rancor.](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/a/ae/Nandina-TNR.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20131007195757) You know I was going to get that in here somewhere. (For the record, when Cassian asked her a few chapters ago if she liked animals, and she said “well, one,” she was referring to Mooi, who is a very good girl. Yes she is. Such a good, good girl.)
> 
>  _Mooi_ = “beautiful, pretty, handsome, fair,” in Dutch. Mads Mikelson is Danish, and I sort of kind of transmuted that into “Galen speaks the Star Wars version of Danish and Lyra speaks Dutch, and Jyn retains a great deal of both languages.” So _“min pusling, min Mooi"_ = “my small and cute creature, my Mooi.” ( _Such_ a good girl.) Lyra’s _“mit barn”_ = “my child.” Also, Jyn’s tradition of being really bad at naming things continues. 
> 
> The [House of Renliss](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/House_Renliss) is a canon subdivision within the Bounty Hunter’s Guild, which apparently held strong for a solid thousand years right up until 0 ABY, when they fractured and fell apart. The House of Renliss was an all-female division devoted to the pursuit of male marks, and they also were mostly former Imperial Security Bureau agents. This seemed an appropriate bounty hunter group to send after Cassian, and it also explains why the Scissorfists were so willing to work with them. (As a side note, I've got a whole headcanon for how this particular mission is an early sign that the Houses of the Bounty Hunter's Guild are beginning to fracture, because there had to be some reason behind that, and I like to think "Darth Vader" is a pretty solid explanation. Figuring this out is potentially one of Cassian's follow-on missions after Dathomir. But anyway.)
> 
> The tainted kyber crystal as a means of hunting for rebels is sort of my theory about how those nasty probe droids found the Alliance even on remote places like Hoth. I mean, what are the odds that probe would not only land on Hoth, but land almost directly on top of the rebel base there? I’m going to say “Luke Skywalker shines like a damn Force beacon and Vader 100% calibrated those corrupt kyber stones to hone in on him.” (Leia’s probably not helping in that regard, either, but Vader doesn’t know who _she_ really is). The tracker in this story is meant to be an early concept test version of those probe droids, the first versions of which were built on Mandalore back at the end of the Clone Wars (possibly even before, because we see Darth Maul using [a smaller version of these probe droids](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/DRK-1_Dark_Eye_probe_droid) in The Phantom Menace). [The version we see in The Empire Strikes Back](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Viper_probe_droid) won’t be used against the Alliance for roughly 2-3 more years. Not that any of this is terribly important to the story, it’s just where my headcanons were at as I planted that little detail back in chapter one. (As a thought exercise, I also imagine that these tainted Force probes might have been the precursor/part of the hyperspace tracking studies that we hear mentioned in Rogue One and see actualized in The Last Jedi. I mean, we only ever see Sith Lords using them...)


End file.
